Virgin Media is the original challenger brand in a fixed category. They have the fastest fibre optic network and a brand that’s filled to brim with attitude. Virgin Media came to VCCP to help launch a TV product, Stream in 2022.
The context was difficult. Virgin Media’s speed leadership credentials was deteriorating. Competitors like BT were coming into the marketplace and overbuilding the market with faster pipes, we would have product parity in a few years. Also, the equity Virgin Media has is in internet, not TV. We were launching a new TV product, something Virgin Media hasn’t really talked about in ATL comms since 2017.
The brief, in a nutshell, was clear: Launch Stream from Virgin Media as the ultimate connected entertainment experience, building on our speed leadership. It is a rich territory to play in. Entertainment is a universal language, we all speak the language of TV. Upon closer inspection, we realised that it wasn’t the cinematography or the amazing casting that makes TV great.. it’s how this content makes us feel. It’s how we connect closer: to ourselves, to the world, and to ourselves.
And while it looks like we are living in a golden age of TV, where there is more content than ever before in more diverse ways than before… the way we access that incredible TV is horrible. Multiple remotes, subscriptions we forget about, bundles trying to create more paywalls. Ridiculous. We tapped into the rebel nature of Virgin Media, the very thing that rooted the brand in creating something like Stream to identify our opportunity.
The thing that made the product great was the speed leadership claim. From internet to interface, Virgin Media is able to control the quality. The truth about Stream is that it was able to deliver the best connected entertainment experience, bring streaming to a TV generation and TV to a streaming generation with an offering that had value, flexibility and convenience baked in. It was a totally new way of watching TV, and we needed a strategy and creative platform that reflected that. We came up with that articulation. The future of viewing is here. The future of viewing is Stream.
We picked the experts of viewing to announce Stream’s arrival. The ones who have watched us ask “What’s it on?” for the 15,724th time. The ones who watched us humans run around the house looking for that 4th remote. Our TVs, of course! We asked, “what if TVs are so excited for the arrival of Stream, they’ve come to life to disrupt our normal lives to tell the nation all about it?” We put mouths on every screen in the UK to shout to the nation that the future of viewing was here.
We created a 360 campaign to tell this story…
A 60’ AV went out to announce the arrival of Stream, using the voice of MC Neat as our mouth. A bumpin’ track where we witnessed mouths everywhere around the UK tell us about Stream started this campaign off. We had fun with blipverts, where we created 2 and 3 second interruptions to tell the UK “The future of viewing is here!” Supported by 20 product feature spots, we highlighted the three key features of the product: value, convenience and flexibility.
Across owned channels, social, press and OOH, we interrupted people’s day to day with our mouth.. Designed to cut-through, it satisfied our goal of being absolutely unmissable.
While results are still rolling in, we have exceeded our commercial goals by +15%.