VIRGIN DISCRUPTORS
Redefining Virgin.com’s content strategy.
Project date: 2013
IN A NUTSHELL
Beyond were tasked with rejuvenating Virgin.com’s content strategy so that the home of the Virgin brand would once again be deemed relevant to entrepreneurs around the world.
Our solution was Virgin Disruptors; A quarterly live streamed debate between experts, innovators, thought leaders and trail blazers driving change within industries connected to the Virgin brand.
Virgin would provide the forum for these industry titans and upstarts to dissect and discuss how emerging technologies, transformational services and radical business approaches were challenging the status quo for the better.
These debates took place once every quarter, contextualised by deeper dive content on Virgin.com before and after each event. Our aim was to give viewers a rapid, rich and balanced overview of some of the major evolutions shaping industries in and around their own.
The result was a 32% increase in page views per visit and a107.27% uplift in time-on-site.
MY ROLE
Strategist: It was my role to refine our social listening research in collaboration with the data team them help pull out the key insights into a coherent report. I was also my responsibility to simmer that research data down to a focus question that encapsulated the key challenge we needed to solve in the creative session.
Lead Creative Facilitator: I designed and lead the Applied Creativity 3 day sprint with the hybrid team of Beyonders and Virgin Clients.
Content Strategist: I was part of the team that ideated, defined and refined the content plan template that would be used as a guide for all future Disruptor events by the internal Virgin editorial team.
BACKGROUND
Virgin.com is the home of the Virgin brand and the group’s central platform from which they link to and support the growth and prosperity of all their subsidiary companies. It’s used by Sir Richard Branson himself to communicate the core mission and values which tie together every company bearing his brand’s name as well has his unique approach to business.
At the start of Beyond’s engagement, Virgin.com’s time on site and page per visit figures were unacceptably low with 68% of visitors bouncing from Virgin.com’s homepage or clicking straight through to one of their operating companies like Virgin Atlantic or Media.
Virgin’s own research suggested that once loyal audience’s from Virgin’s heyday in the 1980’s and 90’s had been eroded by competitors whilst the next generation of entrepreneurs didn’t even consider Virgin to be thought leaders nor innovators.
THE BRIEF
Virgin asked Beyond to define a content strategy that would increase overall engagement on Virgin.com and its social channels focusing especially on attracting a younger, entrepreneurially minded audience who currently didn’t perceive Virgin to be relevant nor disruptive.
There brief included 5 success metrics:
1) Incorporate all of the Virgin companies and heritage
2) Bring to life Virgin’s brand purpose in a way that resonates with current social conversations
3) Unite Virgin’s diverse offerings under a single unifying theme
4) Build Virgin.com’s social following and increase click throughs from social to Virgin.com
5) Increase both time spent on and unique visits to Virgin.com
DEFINING THE PROBLEM
Virgin had once been a company that epitomised radical entrepreneurialism, inspirational leadership and the innovative use of technology. Although some brands such as Virgin Galactic were still pioneers within their industries, Virgin were no longer market leaders in many of the industries in which they competed. Our challenge was to put the Virgin brand at the centre of the emerging conversations that young entrepreneurs were following in industries where Virgin had a legacy if not a leading position.
In order to do this we needed to build a comprehensive understanding of the younger , entrepreneurially minded audience we were targeting as well as the key topics and tensions they were searching for more information around in key industries relevant to Virgin’s brand. Rather than relying on traditional research to understand these audience needs, create user personas and identify relevant content themes, we drew on the massive amounts of data users generate through the social web. We designed a three-stage research program:
Stage 1: In-depth analysis of Virgin.com’s current web analytics, and social conversations about the brand to figure out what the users’ content discovery journey looked like:
1. Where they spend their time
2. What content they like to consume
3. What drives their consideration
Stage 2: Identification of the most promising content areas related to Virgin, and a deep-dive of what is resonating with consumers about Virgin’s story in this space, and why:
1. Which conversations drove traffic
2. What content and messaging converted best
3. Which audience segments have the most potential for increased traffic
4. Where the brand love is around Virgin
5. Which conversations align with the brand purpose
6. The importance of Richard Branson’s social presence & other Virgin channels
Stage 3: An analysis of “white spaces” trending in social and related to the target content areas that present important opportunities for Virgin to make effective content plays – filtered by the following criteria:
1. Fits with Virgin's brand purpose and values
2. Conversation size is large and/or has potential to be
3. Appeals to the audiences Virgin is targeting
4. It is ‘interesting’ – ie: it has that intangible feel of being a good idea
We produced a report (extracts featured on the left) that gave us a in depth understanding of who our audiences needs, the types of content that excited them most and in which content areas their values overlapped with Virgins. Our key take-aways were that:
1. Entrepreneurially minded 18-34 year olds wanted to find out more about the disruptive companies, emerging technologies and the pioneering business practices that were radically shifting consumer behaviour and the status quo within established industries such as music and travel.
2. This audience perceived Richard Branson to be an authority who could offer a balanced and well informed thought leadership even in industries where Virgin were smaller players.
3. This younger audience was also looking for guidance and inspiration within their own careers from business leaders and innovators who they admired.
CREATING THE SOLUTION
We simmered down the key insights from our research into one focus question:
How might Virgin inspire a new generation of entrepreneurs to broaden their perspectives, challenge convention and grow their own businesses?
We then ran a 3 day Applied Creativity sprint (for a full overview of the Applied Creativity process please read this article) around this focus question with a hybrid team including an account director, account manager, producer, myself, a designer and two members of the Virgin client team. We broke down the three days as follows:
Day 1:
1. The intention and desired outcomes from this workshop
2. An overview of our brief and the key findings from our research
3. An explanation for and the context around our chosen focus question
4. The creative principles which we should be using throughout the session
5. The first ideation exercise: Picture Association
6. 3 dot selection of the best ideas from Picture Association
Day 2:
1. The second ideation exercise: Role Play
2. 3 dot selection of the best ideas from Picture Association
3. The third ideation exercise: Idea Speed Dating
4. 3 dot selection of the best ideas from Picture Association
5. Overall best 5 idea selection and mini presentation to group
Day 3:
1. Enrichment of the best ideas
2. Presentation of the enriched ideas
3. Discussion of best ideas
4. Key stakeholder selection of idea to take forward
The proposed idea from the workshop was a series of events called “The Disruptors”. In these Virgin would provide the forum for innovators, established business leaders and experts from Virgin to debate every aspect of a key tension taking place in the industry they all worked within. There would be one event per quarter live streamed on Virgin.com in a dedicated “Disruptors” area . We would also ask event attendees, key influencers and Virgin business leaders relevant to the topics to write about their experiences and learnings and publish this content pre and post event. Each Disruptors series would give readers multiple perspectives of key issues in an engaging format as well as takeaways they could integrate into their working lives.
Based on our social web research report and some industry trend analysis we identified the titles of the first 4 events:
1. Has technology killed the music industry?
2. Have entrepreneurs lost the will to innovate?
3. The future of travel: Are we moving fast enough?
4. Your Workplace Wellbeing: At what cost?
At this point created a Virgin Disruptors sub-brand manifesto and brand look and feel. We also suggested editorial avenues and types of content that could support and be explored in each event and created a content calendar template. Finally we identified possible influencers, business leaders and innovators that Virgin could approach to be involved in each event. With this in place, Virgin’s editorial team were able to take over responsibility for the running of Disruptor events.
The first disruptors event, “Has technology killed the music industry?” took place live from the Virgin Record’s 40th anniversary Exhibition in London’s Victoria House in November 2013. Speakers included Songkick founder Ian Hogarth, Vevo’s Nic Jones, Spotify’s Trevor Skeet, Justin Bieber’s manager Scooter Braun as well artists Will.I.Am and Imogem Heap.
RESULTS
The inaugural Disruptors event, “Has technology killed the music industry?” drove 90,000+ visits to virgin.com in the first month. Page views per visit increased by 32% and the content area delivered a 107.27% uplift in time-on-site.
The first event also generated 125,000+ video views, reached 10,000,000+ Twitter fans, and made 126,000,000 Twitter impressions.
