Virgin are one of the world’s biggest companies with a fantastic brand image… in 20 years time it will all be lost if they can’t tap into the teen and twenties market of today.

Virgin are widely considered the most opportunistic company in the world - they are leading the way in Space Flight Tourism and operate within key core business areas like travel, entertainment and lifestyle. The 30/40 something generation knows of Virgins history and values, and it’s enough for them to buy/ use Virgin products/ services… unfortunately this hasn’t carried over to Generation Y.

Richard Branson’s attempts to engage a younger audience and endear them to the brand by abseiling down hotels in Las Vegas, and flying giant balloons around the world have done more harm than good. Virgin’s profits are falling dramatically, and now they are looking to fight back! But how do you suddenly drop the ‘embarassing older uncle’ image and become cool again?

One thing that has always fascinated me with Virgin was how one company could be involved in so many business activities. Virgin have a hand in everything from trains, planes and media solutions, to health, fitness and mobile telephony. I started to wonder what life would be like if people were to wake up 1 morning to find their super fast 2hr train journey from London to Manchester had been replaced by a 6 hour National Rail service, or their £30 monthly gym membership at Virgin Active replaced by the more expensive Fitness First! What would we do?

Virgin has a history of moving into business areas where the consumer has been underserved and overcharged, Virgin have given consumers an alternate, an option, more often than not a better product. Back in the 80’s and 90’s BA had no real challenger to the British skies - they charged customers whatever they wanted and operated old and environmentally unsafe aircrafts out of Britain. Then came Virgin Atlantic and things changed, for the better, for everyone. These days we all enjoy affordable and quality air travel since BA had to buck up their act in order to compete.

But what if Virgin hadn’t bothered? What would the world be like without Virgin Atlantic?

This is pretty much where my thinking lay… What would a ‘world without Virgin’ be like? I expected it would be a very different world, a world without choice, a world of disappointment, and make do’s.

My account director pitched the approach to the client and they signed it off immediately saying that it was ‘just what they were looking for’ - I set about thinking of engaging ways to deliver the message to our teen and twenties audience.

Inspired by both an interactive film called the Absolute Ruby Red Musical (that challenges the user to help the Ruby Red Grapefruit find the meaning of life, brilliant!) and this ‘Game Revenge’ viral clip that switches from the reality of real and gaming world environments to astonishing effect! My approach was to create an interactive film that young people could relate to, something cheeky, irreverent, and bullshit-free.

I’m not an artist and have never drawn a storyboard in my life so excuse my written description of the idea:

Media: Interactive experience that the user can click to control.

Start: 1 minute introduction film: We see a boy playing on his PC. The camera comes behind him and zooms into the screen. We see that he is controlling a fantasy world of similar style to Sim City and Roller Coaster Tycoon. He is struggling - his Sims are throwing up outside travel terminals, moaning about the price of a coke, upset at the lack of entertainment, angry that their TV service has gone down, getting fatter due to lack of exercise, spending more money than they have just to survive!

Choice: The user then takes control of the world, through the eyes of the boy. They interact with the different elements for a while before getting a message from the City Mayor explaining that a celebratory entrepreneur wants to visit the world, the Mayor asks permission to grant access to the entrepreneur. At this point the user has the option to reject the entrepreneur, in which case they go back to the game which gets harder with the Sims becoming more unruly before getting the message again, OR, they can choose to accept the entrepreneur into the world in which case we go to film mode 2.

Enter Richard: Back in film mode the game pans to the edge of the map and in to the city walks Richard Branson, the camera zooms in on him smiling, greeting sims who become overjoyed. He takes out a magic wand and as he walks around the map he transforms the fortunes of various elements e.g. He waves his wand at:

• A shop, which start selling Virgin Cola, the sims around it become happier and buy it because it’s cheaper and tastier than Coca Cola.

• The transport services, which become more reliable and cheaper (Virgin Trains and Atlantic), and the city starts to run smoothly.

• A forgotten plot of land, which he converts into the V festival, and as a result musicians enter the city making it trendy attracting more sims and generating wealth.

Experience: A minute or 2 later the user will then receive a ‘ready to experience a world with Virgin’ message. On clicking ‘yes’ they are warped into the body of one of the sims. They control the sim at eye level and navigate around the city interacting with different Virgin elements - all 40 of Virgins business are represented. Some top line thoughts on functionality enable the user to:

• Go to the Virgin Brides shop to get information (opening hours, about Virgin Brides etc) and leave messages or read messages left by brides in a feedback book.

• Visit the V festival area to watch clips from last year’s event, buy tickets for this year and enter into dialogue with other real time users of the experience (similar to second life)

• Interact with the Richard Branson character - The user can click on him to learn about his Rock and Roll Past, or watch him doing his crazy thing as he flies over the city in a hot air balloon, and abseils down buildings

• Clicking on some elements may take you to another site or open up a new brand films which can be developed over time and worked into the experience

• Perhaps there is a Virgin entrepreneurs area where wannabe entrepreneurs can upload their ideas, thoughts, videos etc for everyone to view

This would become the ultimate Virgin experience… Briefly demonstrating how bad a world without Virgin would be, before going into how wonderful a world with Virgin is - Magnifico…

The experience would exist on and off site - Various video elements could be seeded out to YouTube and Daily motion, and potentially it could be converted into a mini app experience for people to embed in their blogs.

Whilst an idea like this would almost need a limitless budget I believe that there are endless possibilities and whilst the client didn’t go for it in the end, I thought I’d share it!

A World Without Virgin. A World With Virgin. A Better World.