Finding our Virginity: How fighting fact with feeling helped Virgin Media take on the might of Sky

Despite having a smaller budget, Virgin Media needed to compete better for TV and broadband customers against category leader, Sky. The role of communications was to ensure Virgin was prominent and worth a premium in consumers’ minds when choosing a supplier. Over two years, TV brand and direct marketing evoked the Virgin masterbrand’s rule-breaking personality to communicate the benefits of fast broadband and seamless technology more emotionally. Brand metrics improved and Virgin grew its share of net new broadband connections from 27.1% to 44.4%. Econometrics calculated that marketing drove £633m of incremental net value, based on the projected net revenues of customer acquisitions over three years.