In April 2022, Virgin Atlantic emerged from the pandemic years fighting, refuelled with a renewed vigour and a new brand platform, See the World Differently.

Our brief was to amplify this platform and connect with the target audience (Experience Embracers) focussing on the brand’s ‘secret sauce’ – its people.

In a nutshell, our brief was to:

• Demonstrate that Virgin Atlantic is a purposeful brand (research from Kantar identified that to appeal at scale, we needed to do this)

• Cement the brand’s position as being the ‘most inclusive airline in the skies’

• Get widespread coverage

• Make more people want to fly Virgin Atlantic

• Make the news travel across paid and owned media

• Attract new crew into aviation after 2 years in lockdown

To cement Virgin Atlantic’s position as the most inclusive airline, we listened to Virgin Atlantic’s people, ripped up the (Vivienne Westwood designed) uniform rule book and re-wrote its gender identity policy offering its people the option to choose the uniform they identified with most.

And there was more. We also announced:

• Pronoun badges for its people and customers

• Updated ticketing systems for those who hold passports with gender neutral gender markers, to select ‘U’ or ‘X’ gender codes as well as the gender-neutral title, ‘Mx’

• Mandatory inclusivity training for its people and tourism and hotel partners

We knew this policy change would earn coverage. But to really blow it out of the water we needed a noisy, bold and creative PR execution, a plethora of media assets and some stylish and sexy talent to front it.

So why focus on LGBTQ+ communities and gender neutral uniforms?

Research told us our ‘Experience Embracer’ audience indexes highly in support of inclusion and equality, and as a brand Virgin Atlantic outwardly ‘champions the individuality of its people and customers’. At the same time, some new crew members had requested a gender neutral approach to their uniforms.

Our strategy was to show how Virgin Atlantic ‘sees the world differently’ and emotionally engage Experience Embracers with individuality and inclusion by refreshing one of its most iconic brand attributes – its striking Vivienne Westwood uniforms.

This activity built on Virgin Atlantic’s heritage in LGBTQ+ through its sponsorship of the Attitude Awards, Manchester Pride and its Pride flight a few years ago. It also neatly sat under its inclusivity programme called Be Yourself, which had recently lifted a ban on visible tattoos and the option for crew of all genders to wear make-up.

A creative visual moment kicked off the campaign - a ‘Runway on a Runway’. We turned a sleepy airstrip in Bedfordshire into the world's most inclusive catwalk led by LGBTQ+ ally and Drag Race icon Michelle Visage – who incidentally is also mother to a trans non-binary child – alongside non-binary and trans influencers, Virgin Atlantic cabin crew and Alison, one of Virgin’s trans pilots.

Our earned assets told stories of real crew members positively impacted by the change. It confronted consumer prejudices and acted as a rallying cry to the industry.

The scale was significant; three agencies, 20 account people, an 85-person shoot capturing images and content for two films. The phone rang off the hook for a week solid.

We had just 8 weeks to deliver. And days before launch, the Queen passed away meaning a two week media blackout, before revving the engines again for take off.

Media outputs

Our assets went viral achieving 15 million organic and 56 million paid impressions on social. Non-binary icon, Sam Smith, shared the story on Instagram and TikTok three times – just for the love of it.

We also:

• Dominated headlines; 550+ UK media articles (2000+ globally)

• Of which 96% was positive with 4% stoking debate in less progressive titles

• Secured earned reach of over 4.6 billion

On day two, the social lead at Virgin, Sarah Winter commented: “These are the most impressive results for a comparable launch in our history!”

Business outcomes

Most importantly, it impacted Virgin Atlantic’s people. Post campaign, we saw a:

• 10% increase in colleagues saying they felt ‘included at work’

• 11% increase in agreement that Virgin Atlantic ‘encourages employees to be their true selves at work’

• Job applications to Virgin Atlantic doubled, creating an impactful follow up story

“I’m non-binary and it means I get to be myself at work. It means everything to me.” - Jamie Forsstrom, Cabin Crew.

We also made real change within aviation and beyond. Three days after launch, BA announced it too was assessing its own inclusivity (and uniform) policy.

Target audience outcomes

Independent post campaign research found:

• 20% increase in belief that VA is the most inclusive airline (32% pre- and 52% post campaign)

• 26% increase in belief that VA sees the world differently (19% pre- and 45% post campaign)

• 8% increase in consideration (36% pre- and 44% post campaign)