CP+B Takes Flash Ads Into Virgin Territory

On the heels of its wildly popular Burger King stunt featuring a "subservient chicken," Crispin Porter + Bogusky is set to break the interactive leg of a campaign for Virgin Atlantic Airways, playing up the client's in-flight features in an effort to reach business travelers.The Miami shop, which landed the airline's $12-15 million account last May, will break a series of banners next Monday on sites such as FT.com and BusinessWeek Online—marking its first interactive work for the brand. In one execution, users are prompted to make a passenger jump on a business-class flat bed. Another plays up Virgin's onboard massages, rippling and making soothing sounds when users roll their mouse over it. The Flash ads use the line, "Go jet set, go," and link to Virginatlantic.com."A lot of banners that are the most successful are the ones that bring you in them and make you a participant," said CP+B creative director Jeff Benjamin, who was hired by partner, ecd Alex Bogusky in December. "You're sort of creating the brand experience at that point.""The goal of this campaign is to communicate the style and glamour of our Upper Class cabin and the new Upper Class Suite product features in a way that will captivate and entertain business flyers," said Chris Rossi, vp of sales and marketing at Virgin Atlantic. The campaign also includes inserts parodying airline-safety cards in key business publications, which broke last week, as well as oversized rooftop ads. Spending was undisclosed.The MDC-backed shop tapped Benjamin—formerly an art director at Omnicom Group's Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco, where he crafted online work for Saturn and Hewlett-Packard—to help bolster the agency's interactive capabilities. CP+B's unconventional media arsenal also has included beer-bottle labels for Molson and an effort for BMW's Mini that placed the cars on the tops of SUVs."Obviously, [campaigns] need to have an integrated approach, and so building up their interactive internally is going to give [CP+B] an opportunity to do it the way they want to do it," said Susan Goodman, chairman and CEO of marketing consultancy Goodman & Co. in New York.For clients like BK who are trying to attract the elusive 18- to 34-year-old audience, the Internet is vital. "In order for us to reach this important demographic, we absolutely have to tap into the types of media that they are consuming," said Blake Lewis, a rep for Miami-based BK.Benjamin, 29, who also has helped CP+B develop quirky Internet executions for the Mini Convertible and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota in his first five months on the job, is creating a hybrid model, where some programs are executed in-house and others are outsourced. In the case of SubservientChicken.com, which last week submitted to Web surfers' 100-millionth request, CP+B collaborated with Boston i-shop The Barbarian Group to bring the idea to life.Benjamin, who works with a technologist and Flash designer, is in the midst of recruiting a handful of art directors. "It's sort of like The A-Team, where you have a small group of people with different skill sets, and if trapped in a garage, you could bust out, or you could do really cool interactive work," he said.

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CP+B Takes Flash Ads Into Virgin Territory

Ann M. Mack

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Ann M. Mack