Assignment Virgin Galactic is the world’s first spaceline, founded by serial entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson. Agency was asked to generate broad publicity for Virgin Galactic in connection with the announ-cement of the Scandinavian travel agencies selected to sell trips to space (ASAs). The stated goal was to firstly create awareness of Virgin Galactic and enlighten the public of the feasability and imminence of space travel. Secondly the goal was to get Scandinavian media to start reporting about space travel as an available product, not science fiction.
Target group Everyone intrigued by space.
Concept A press conference was held in Gothenburg in conjunction with the national travel fair (TUR 2009). Present at the press conference was Danish astronaut to be and one of Virgin Galactic’s first customers, Per Wimmer, as well as representatives from the selected Swedish travel agencies and Virgin Galactic CEO, Stephen Attenborough.
Impact The press conference was covered by national and regional press, tv and radio. The launch generated over 50 articles in major dai-lies such as Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Expressen, Dagens Indu-stri, GT and Metro. Dagens Nyheter and Aftonbladet also made video reports for their web tv sections and leading newswire TT’s web tv distributed a report to regional and local media.
Leading tv channel TV4’s newscast Nyheterna aired a report as did public service broadcaster SVT’s national (Aktuellt) and regional newscasts (Västnytt).
In addition, the press conference was covered on three of the ra-dio network P4’s regional stations (P4 Göteborg, P4 Väst and P4 Norrbotten) as well as by national radio P3’s newscast. Attending astronaut-to-be, Per Wimmer, was also interviewed by radio network Mix Megapol. The event was also covered by tech blogs as well as several leading travel bloggers.
Here are a few examples of the publicity generated by the launch:
