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Usain Bolt stars in new Virgin Media marketing campaign
Friday 13th January 2012, by Harry Wallis
Virgin Media has launched a marketing campaign to promote its new broadband deals, starring Olympic runner Usain Bolt.
Bolt features in the advertisements alongside Sir Richard Branson, with the project hoping to emphasise Virgin's position as the UK's fastest broadband provider.
Using the tagline "Keep Up", the campaign sees Bolt trying to impersonate Branson, sporting the Virgin chairman's trademark blonde goatee.
Seth Gordon directed the advertisements, which will be shown for the first time during ITV1's Take Me Out Show this Saturday (January 14th), after campaign teasers are shown in TV and Facebook on the previous night.
It is hoped that the campaign will promote the benefits of using Virgin Media broadband, with a dedicated website set to go online tonight (January 13th) to accompany the advertisements.
Twitter has already been utilised, with Usain Bolt this week pretending to be Richard Branson on the microblogging website under the hastage #IamRBranson.
Jeff Dodds, executive director of brand and marketing communications at Virgin Media, described the campaign as a "brilliantly simple idea".
Mr Dodds explained: "We've got a long history of giving our customers more and we wanted to let them know about the exciting boost they’ll soon get from us.
"Our competitors' customers might also feel a twinge of envy when they hear about this as what better spokesperson for our superfast broadband than Usain Bolt? He's the living embodiment of speed!"
Mr Dodds insisted that, when planning the campaign, Virgin Media strived to avoid "sportsman endorsement clichés".
Virgin announced its new broadband deals earlier this week, confirming that four million of its customers will benefit from better services.
The upgrade is scheduled to begin February and will cost around £110 million.
It will mean that subscribers to the firm's existing 10Mb, 20Mb and 50Mb services will see their speeds at least doubled, whereas customers using 100Mb deals will be upgraded to 120Mb.
Categories: Broadband, Virgin Media
