How do you launch the most anticipated hotel brand in decades with no assets, an unfinished hotel, and lengthy opening delays?
Simple. Let your friends do it for you.
HOW IT WORKED:
Rumors was a social media campaign that turned VirginHotels.com into a virtual rumor mill, where fans
could tell us via a tweet what they “heard.”
And used them to introduce ourselves to our Chicago neighbors.
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Rumors asked people - the media, Chicago, Virgin’s fans - to speculate what Richard Branson was up to with this mysterious new (and long overdue) property. We amplified the campaign using the biggest influencer we could find, and a pretty interesting extra...
We also dangled a pretty enticing carrot - one lucky rumor we hear maybe, perhaps come true.
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As the rumors poured in, we gave props to the best ones...
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As the contest rolled on, weekly winners were chosen from hundreds of tweets.
Rumors asked people - the media, Chicago, Virgin’s fans - to speculate what Richard Branson was up to with this mysterious new (and long overdue) property. We amplified the campaign using the biggest influencer we could find, and a pretty interesting extra...
We also dangled a pretty enticing carrot - one lucky rumor we hear maybe, perhaps come true.
As the rumors poured in, we gave props to the best ones...
As the contest rolled on, weekly winners were chosen from hundreds of tweets.
Over 2800 rumors were spread in all. And in the end, as promised, one lucky winner saw their rumor come true.
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Well, Almost. With Morgan Freeman and James Earl Jones a bit busy, we found a perfectly willing substitute.
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Well, Almost. With Morgan Freeman and James Earl Jones a bit busy, we found a perfectly willing substitute.
RESULTS:
“Rumors” is regarded by the Virgin as one of the marquee launches not just for the hotel, but the entire brand. Hundreds of thousands of impressions were made with next to no media dollars spent, and consumer generated assets acting as the bulk of our shared content. Richard Branson himself has written about it, and the effort was a runner up for that year’s “Best use of Twitter” according to Twitter’s own award show.
