Virgin advertisement featuring Eliot Spitzer
It’s not only talk-show hosts who feed off of politicians’ sex scandals.
So, too, do companies eager to ingratiate themselves with young, self-consciously hip audiences. A case in point: the ad launched this week with dizzying speed by Virgin Mobile Canada, one of the latest spinoffs of billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Group.
Within a day of the resignation of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, Virgin Mobile was running a full-page ad in Toronto’s Metro and 24 commuter dailies playing on his notoriety as “Client 9″ in the complaint against alleged prostitution ring, Emperor’s Club V.I.P.
The ad pictures Spitzer with a thought bubble above his head. “I’m tired of being treated like a number,” it reads. “At Virgin Mobile, you’re more than just a number. . .Whether you’re #9 or #900, you’ll get hooked up with somebody who’ll finally treat you just how you want to be treated.”
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The ad is part of Virgin Mobile’s continuing “You call the shots” campaign, said Nathan Rosenberg, chief marketing officer. To date, it has featured New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton framed by a thought bubble that reads, “I wish my bill wasn’t so out of control.” A third ad, featuring Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, rolls out next week as the last in the political series, Rosenberg told Canada’s Marketing Magazine.
Richard Branson
“We have the license as a brand to do things that are more edgy, interesting and engaging than probably some of the other brands do,” he said. “That’s why we feel like we really want to keep doing this.”
Among other advertising gambits, Rosenberg got Canadian-born sex-symbol Pamela Anderson to extol the “Joy of Text” for a Valentine’s Day campaign, and Branson himself to dress up as a superhero doctor and scale a wall in downtown Toronto.
The company, a partnership between Branson’s Virgin Group and Bell Mobility, a Canadian provider of wireless services, is reportedly the largest cell provider to Canadian youth.
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1 Comments
#1. Glen 06.22.2008
If you take the world famous Virgin logo and turn it slighty to the left so that where the underline and tail of the g form an X,you’ll also notice the V forms a slightly hidden S and the i,r and part of the g form a broken capital E,spelling the word SEX. So you have Sex/Virgin in one word.
Very subliminally clever Mr.Branson.
So SEX is very much part of the VIRGIN brand in more than one way.
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