Good on you Virgin – getting social

Kudos to Virgin America – some really great use of the internet to engage your customers and potential customers.

In a campaign called Name our Planes, Virgin invites the public to submit names for their new fleet of Virgin America planes. This is how they did it.

1. Create a timelapse video and put it up on YouTube. This shows that they had the vision and took the time and effort to install a video camera in a hangar and record a new plane being emblazened in Virgin’s livery.
   1. Its been up for about 2 months, has had 224k views, 60 comments and has been favourited 300 times.
   2. It blatantly directs traffic to the Name our Planes website – which is the ultimate goal.
   3. Its an interesting insight into how planes are painted/prepared.
2. Create a fantastic Flash site called NameourPlanes.com.
   1. It has a Digg Swarm feel to it that shows the relative popularity of the names that have been submitted.
   2. There have been nearly 12000 names being suggested. Testimony to user participation and people wanting to contribute in a creative way. And what better way than to say that you named one of Virgin America’s new planes!
   3. They collect details of interested and participating members of the public – for future marketing of course. Not a bad thing.
   4. They didn’t try to add too much Flash(y) functionality to the site – its just right.
3. Just received an email from Virgin America that pulls all of the above together:

‘If there’s one thing we love at Virgin America, it’s creativity. And guts. And by entering Name Our Planes, you just showed us both. So cheers to you for submitting your big idea. And good luck. Because if you win, your name will be etched on that baby forever. We’d say that’s cause for some serious bragging rights.’

We will undoubtedly be hearing and seeing more about this and this kind of campaign in the future.Technorati Tags: virgin america, nameourplanes, user participation, social media

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