Virgin’s Fair Go Bro campaign featuring Doug Pitt attracts increase in brand awareness by 21% according to latest results via Brand Health

According to its latest Brand Health results Australians are more willing to consider Virgin Mobile than ever before, with the telco enjoying an unprecedented increase in brand awareness and consideration following its Fair Go Bro campaign.

The Brand Health results showed that there was a massive 21% jump in awareness and 23% increase in consideration for Virgin Mobile from June to August 2012. Virgin Mobile attributes much of this success to its Fair Go Bro campaign, which saw it give Brad Pitt’s brother Doug a fair go and a taste of the cele-bro-ty lifestyle, as the face of its campaign via Euro RSCG Sydney, One Green Bean and Havas Worldwide.

WATCH SWEET GIG SPOT

Says David Scribner, Virgin Mobile marketing director: “There’s no question that Fair Go Bro has significantly helped shoot Virgin Mobile into people’s consideration set by leveraging the equity of the Virgin brand to deliver our Fair Go message in a truly Virgin way.

“We don’t compete with other telcos’ media budgets, but we can make our media budget work harder when we nail consumer engagement. Fair Go Bro was purposely social-by-design so that it would drive mass talkability and ultimately deliver on earned media – and the results speak for themselves. The campaign generated more in earned media value than was spent in paid media.”

The Fair Go Bro campaign launched in July and quickly went viral, generating over 1.6 million views of the teaser video; 31,000+ ‘likes’ for Doug on the campaign website and a PR reach of more than 160 million globally.

According to the Brand Health research, prompted advertising awareness for Virgin Mobile has also risen substantially by 50%. Scribner said typically telcos will see a 1-2% increase in brand health from quarter to quarter:

Says Scribner: “These scores are proof that good ideas can come from anywhere, and the best output is achieved when you have true collaboration between PR, social, creative, ATL and media to turn a great engaging idea into one that is outstanding and delivers through the line with the maximum ROI.”

Further leveraging the success of Fair Go Bro, Virgin Mobile is using Doug Pitt for a major retail campaign entitled ‘Sweet Gig’. Running from now until the end of November, ‘Sweet Gig’ offers consumers a free (sweet) 1GB of data for the life of their plan if they sign up with a Samsung handset.

A 30-second TVC, which launched yesterday on free-to-air and subscription TV, shows Doug Pitt living the cele-bro-ty lifestyle on his recent trip to Australia and enjoying his own ‘Sweet Gig’ as the face of the Virgin Mobile campaign.

The voiceover explains: “At Virgin Mobile we’ve given Doug Pitt a pretty sweet gig, so we think it’s only fair you get one too. Get a Samsung Galaxy SII for an extra $5 per month on the Big Plan $29 and we’ll give you a bonus gig of data. That’s a massive 1.25gb of data for the life of your plan.”

Media support will include TV, print, outdoor, online and radio.

Sweet Gig Campaign:

Media: Starcom