Virgin Ad Flies High in the Travel Sector

Virgin Atlantic’s “See The World Differently” campaign has been running since 2022, proudly embracing the diversity and difference of the company’s outlook, its staff and its range of destinations. It’s those destinations that are on full display in their latest ad from Lucky Generals, a visually spectacular piece of work which revels in the different countries and cultures Virgin connects.

Rather than a story as such the ad presents a montage of scenes united by a theme of travellers and tourists helping one another – “being a rainbow” as the voiceover puts it. A dapper looking man lands in a hot country and lends his fan to a fellow traveller. A holidaymaker on a Caribbean beach dives into the water to prevent a kid’s cricket ball being lost. A bus driver turns up the music so all his passengers can dance. As travellers, the ad says, we’re not isolated from the places we visit – we can take part more fully and be our best selves.

It’s tied together by a warm, wise voiceover by the poet Maya Angelou – archive audio recorded before her death in 2014. Voiceovers in ads can be distracting for viewers but here the words give context to otherwise unconnected images, priming the audience’s emotional response.

One thing to notice about the ad is its skilful use of branding. Every “See The World Differently” ad begins and ends with a cloudscape and a Virgin Atlantic airliner soaring through it. It’s turned the clouds into a distinctive asset for Virgin and means the ads introduce the brand early, and it unifies the campaign in the same way their slogan does.

The benefits are obvious when you look at Brand Fluency – Virgin achieves a massive 96% here, an exceptional score putting it twenty points above the category average. That’s 1 in 5 viewers who don’t recognise the brand in the average Travel ad but do identify Virgin Atlantic here, a significant boost to the ad’s effectiveness.

And this is an ad where high Fluency is a real benefit, as the potential for growth and short-term sales is high. “See The World Differently” gets a strong 4.1-Star Rating (above average for the sector) and an exceptional short-term Spike Rating. That’s important because it means the ad is performing exceptionally on the two areas – Spike and Brand Fluency – where the Travel category is typically weaker.

Travel ads have a natural emotional advantage over some other categories – they can show happy people in beautiful settings as a matter of course. That both feels authentic and drives positive emotion, things the Virgin Atlantic ad does well too. But Travel ads are usually less effective at sealing the deal with the shorter-term metrics of Spike and Fluency, and this is where a strongly branded campaign like “See The World Differently” shows its real power.