Long before anyone had heard the term ‘Covid-19’, Virgin Atlantic was in trouble. With three years of consecutive losses, they were already ill-equipped to fight off a global pandemic. So, when flights were grounded almost overnight, their passenger numbers fell by 80% and revenue decreased by more than 77%. Virgin Atlantic was facing an existential threat to its survival. The business managed to salvage itself by re-engineering their operations and switching to cargo, consolidating flights, ditching old aircrafts, cutting costs and relying on investors for billions in emergency funding. By mid 2021, restrictions on flying were beginning to ease. It was now time for strategic planning to step up to the plate, as Virgin Atlantic set us the daunting challenge of getting millions of people flying with the brand again.

We applied our platform consistently and imaginatively across a range of activity in 2022, via the creative idea of championing the individuality of people and cultures. We began in April by doing travel comms differently - focusing on people, rather than places. The launch film went against stereotypes and commonplace depictions of crew as servile. Instead, our representation of crew and customers was done differently - by celebrating the individuality of Virgin Atlantic’s people. In May, Virgin Atlantic did internal policies differently - inviting crew to visibly show off their tattoos, as a means of enabling the individuality of staff to shine. In October, Virgin Atlantic then took a different stance on gender and identity inclusion within aviation. We created the film 'Runway on a Runway', the world's most inclusive catwalk, to announce Virgin Atlantic’s pioneering move away from gendered uniform options.