2016 Bronze Financial Services

Agency Visual Voice Global

Client Virgin Money

Campaign summary 26.2% off or a 2.62% mortgage for running 26.2 miles

Campaign overview

Virgin Money set a challenging brief: to celebrate the one millionth Virgin Money London Marathon finisher crossing the finishing line in 2016, strengthen their ongoing sponsorship and turn Marathon runners into Virgin Money customers.

Strategy

Virgin Money wanted to celebrate the one millionth London Marathon finisher in 2016 and strengthen their sponsorship.

This challenge required the creation of incentives to encourage and convert users.

The Virgin Money London Marathon #OneInAMillion community hub positioned Virgin Money in a new way that would appeal to all marathon runners, past and present.

The biggest challenge now was how to validate the runners to allow them access to the hub of marathon-related rewards and Virgin Money offers.

To achieve this Virgin Money built a complex and robust validation engine that was easy to use both in-house and for the runners. By targeting runners using different touchpoints on the lead up to the marathon, the aim was to create a new generation of Virgin Money customers - with only four months to turn around the idea and a budget of only £50k.

Creativity

Virgin Money wanted to build a community for people who have shared the Marathon experience.

It created a rewards site with a bespoke validation engine that granted access whilst checking almost five million fields of data.

It captured user data and gave rewards with the theme ‘26’ – the number of miles in the marathon, such as 26.2% discounts and 2.62% mortgages.

2016 runners would be easy to find - most attended an expo pre-run. RFID tags gave instant access without entering details. The rest could join when they finished the run and recorded their official details.

Previous year’s runners were more challenging to find. A competition to capture marketing permissions prior to launch was needed. Entries differentiated the runners between hard match (instant access if they passed the form), soft match (if a few details were slightly out) and no match.

Results

30% of all 2016 marathon runners signed up, and the campaign surpassed internal KPIs.

It was picked up by several online blogs with Virgin Money’s Marketing Director Paul Lloyd, saying: ‘One million people finishing the London Marathon is an outstanding milestone and we wanted to mark that with something exclusive for all those brilliant runners.’

#OneInAMillion trended the day of the marathon and messaging resonated brilliantly with the running community.

A purpose built Voicedeck dashboard monitored and retweeted finishers using the hashtag to drive runners to the hub.

This was incredibly effective and key to the success. This was the perfect way to enhance Virgin’s reputation as an innovative brand and the campaign created an incredibly positive brand affinity between the runners and the brand.

Team

Thom Shardlow (Co Founder/Director) • Alex Newland (Co Founder/Director) • Will Nutbrown (CTO) • Vinny Fonseca (Developer) • Jon Owen (Designer) • David Ramsbottom (Head of Brand Marketing) • Kristy Armer (Brand Marketing Manager) • Eleanor Grubb (Marketing Delivery) • Andrew Nicholson (Head of Sponsorship Marketing) • Antony Simm (Head of Social Media) • Dwight Thomas (Business Director)