Results reveal Virgin Mobile Australia’s ‘Fair Go Bro’ campaign is its most successful yet via One Green Bean and Havas Worldwide Sydney

Virgin Mobile Australia has revealed that its most recent brand campaign ‘Fair Go Bro’ which saw Brad Pitt’s unknown younger brother given a ‘fair go’ has outperformed all other previous campaigns for the telco in their 12 year history.

Says David Scribner, Virgin Mobile Australia’s marketing director: “We had our biggest sales quarter ever, our biggest month ever and we have held industry leading retention throughout this campaign. Our goal was always to accelerate our position in the marketplace against the ‘big three’ and we have achieved that.”

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The fully integrated campaign, developed collaboratively by Virgin Mobile’s retained PR and social agency One Green Bean and its network affiliate Havas Worldwide Sydney, made overnight global headlines when it launched in July. Promising to give Brad Pitt’s brother Doug a taste of the celebrity lifestyle in the spirit of its ‘Fair Go For All’ brand proposition, it has driven a massive 21% jump in awareness, a 23% increase in consideration and 50% increase prompted advertising awareness, according to a brand health research report released in early October. Final PR reach was more than 160 million from 334 pieces of editorial coverage secured around the world and the campaign even received the thumbs up from Brad who thought it was “hilarious!”

Says Kat Thomas, One Green Bean managing director: “We made the most of every marketing dollar with a strong social-by-design campaign that generated more in earned media value than was spent in paid media, ensuring share of voice for Virgin Mobile despite their media budget being a fraction that of its competitors. In fact, the campaign continues to generate earned media with the advent of Brad’s own ad prompting further conversation about Doug and his role as Virgin Mobile’s ambassador.”

Fair Go Bro launched on 2 July with a teaser video that introduced the world to Doug Pitt – an everyday family man with a suburban lifestyle, and quickly took the world by storm. The PR push helped amass 1.3m views in the first week with no paid media support, while 30,000 people showed Doug some Facebook ‘like’ on the campaign website.

Two weeks later, following a groundswell of support and interest from consumers and media, Virgin Mobile announced Doug’s forthcoming visit to Australia, with a social media competition to become part of Doug’s entourage to drive further engagement. The first major burst of the campaign creative simultaneously went live, running 15′ TVCs and OOH with Doug promoting the various benefits of Virgin mobile plans to build on consumer awareness.

Doug landed in Australia in mid-August, with a publicity blitz securing 30 interviews across print, TV and radio and a transformative TVC going-to-air which had Doug feeling more comfortable in his celebrity-skin, in conjunction with an outdoor metro poster campaign. The general public were encouraged to use a GPS tracker on the campaign website to find Doug and if they got ‘papped’ with him won an HTC phone. Virgin Mobile even made an outrageous bid to have Sydney’s Pitt Street re-named Doug Pitt Street – prompting a tweet from city Mayor Clover Moore acknowledging the cheeky stunt.

Says Steve Coll, Havas Worldwide Australia ECD: “Close agency collaboration is the only way to produce big, effective, newsworthy ideas. I experienced it on the Walkers ‘Sandwich’ campaign. And, in the case of ‘Fair Go Bro’, the campaign has been a true collaborative effort between Havas Worldwide and One Green Bean, from creative conception through to delivery. Clients with the pedigree of Virgin Mobile Australia are demanding a higher level of collaboration from their agencies. As the old saying has it, ‘None of us is as good as all of us’.”

Says Thomas: “The ‘one team’ agency process was key to our success. It goes to show what can be achieved when you have true collaboration between PR, social, creative, ATL and media teams that deliver work seamlessly through channel.”

Notable results:

• 334 pieces of branded media coverage (200 in Australian market) with 100% positive sentiment
• 15 to 1 return on investment in PR
• $4.98million earned media PR value (Australia only)
• $1.6million Equivalent Advertising Value (Australia only)
• Reach of over 160m (28m in Australia)
• Brand mentions included in 98% of editorial coverage
• Nearly one third (32%) of editorial coverage featured advertising materials
• 2 million+ views for campaign video content
• 368,094 unique visitors to FairGoBro.com.au
• 25% of traffic to FairGoBro.com.au driven by social media
• 9,553 tweets and 7,980 blog pieces worldwide
• 10:1 positive online sentiment
• 193,352 story impressions via social sharing functionality

Concept Creation: One Green Bean & Havas Worldwide Sydney

TV Production: The Glue Society, Matt Devine