The campaign idea dramatizes, in tongue-in-cheek fashion, what happens to people when enduring the stresses and pain of car and ‘plane journeys: stripped of their humanity and turned into zombies. By so vividly bringing to life the frustration, anger and stresses of travelling by car and plane in familiar graphic novel artistry, we literally turn other modes of transport into the baddies. In contrast we see how people travelling by Virgin Trains are fully, happily, human, enjoying their journeys to the full. The work presents a simple choice: ‘Don’t Go Zombie, Go Virgin Trains. The media strategy was to talk to our audience at the most frustrating points of their journey, when we knew people would be feeling ‘most Zombie’. The campaign could therefore provide a positive wakeup call, communicating at moments when the audience was most sensitive to our message.

We shook car and plane users out of their usual travel habits: 10% more car, and 11% more ‘plane users were ‘less likely’ to use car or plane for business travel.

Consideration for train travel increased (up 20% for leisure plane users; up 15% for leisure car users), as did consideration for Virgin Trains specifically (11% increase for regular and 8% increase for infrequent users). Crucially, it also made vital non-users 7% more likely to travel Virgin Trains.This behavioural shift saw us achieve the highest ever ROMI for a Virgin Trains campaign.(source: Synovate Advertising and Brand Tracking Dec.’10)