Crispin! & Helen Keller's Wife

About our friends at Crispin, from Newsweek

Virgin’s New Flight of Fancy

The airline tapped a hot ad shop to help it relaunch the jet-set age

By Arian Campo-Flores
NEWSWEEK

Nov. 10 issue — In August, two creative directors at the Miami ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky wrestled with a new tag line for their client Virgin Atlantic Airways. They liked “Jet swanky,” but it sounded a bit superficial. “Going up?” echoed United Airlines’ “Rising.” Then they nailed it: “Go, jet set, go!”

       ON THE HEELS of the Concorde’s last flight, Virgin hopes that tag line will signal that it’s the rightful heir to the supersonic traveling class. (“Rock stars, keep on touring”; “Supermodels, keep on strutting.”) It’s a key part of one of the most anticipated ad campaigns of the year. After all, rarely do such irreverent partners come together—an agency whose cheeky, award-winning work for Mini Cooper and IKEA have made it one of the hottest shops around, and a client known to fancy racy ads. When CP?B pitched Virgin for the work early this year, the airline was so smitten that it truncated its search halfway through. Ever since, the two have goaded each other on, as NEWSWEEK observed behind the scenes.
What's Your Digital IQ? Take our quiz.
        The agency first needed to clarify the airline’s identity, which was torn between its rebellious roots and its aspirations for a more sophisticated image. Virgin’s most recent tag line—”Serious fun”—was “the biggest cop-out we’ve propagated,” said John Riordan, vice president of customer services for Virgin. “More moronic than oxymoronic.”
        When CP+B recommended a new identity—”a party on the way to London”—that embraced the airline’s irreverence, “we were on edge,” said Riordan, as he and his colleagues envisioned debauchery in the aisles. But eventually, the Virgin team came around, with one condition—that the word “party” never appear in any ad.
        In August, CP+B presented Virgin with the fruits of its labors. Executive creative director Alex Bogusky explained the proposed tag line, “Go, jet set, go!”: “We’re thinking of it as the ‘Just do it’ of travel,” he said. “It’s a call to action to get out there and do great things.” Then he unloaded a bevy of ideas: a Jetrosexual magazine, billboard ads with lines like “Whose guitar pick is in my martini?,” saucy 30-second spots involving couples tickling each other on the flat bed. In the weeks since, the Virgin team has pushed ahead on some ideas it’s jazzed about—like a bar replicating the Upper Class cabin that would go in malls or airports—and nixed others, such as an ad touting Virgin as Playboy’s airline of choice (“The Mile High Club just got a boost”). “We’re just excited to make some noise again,” said a Virgin executive. If CP+B hits the mark, Virgin will be heard.