Virgin Mobile Australia – ‘Making Mobile Better’ Ad

Although yet to go live (it’s part of a three month campaign that begins this week), Virgin Australia will be launching a new national campaign targeting ‘anti-social’ mobile phone behaviour. Fronted by American actress Jane Lynch (of Glee fame), the first campaign ad shows Lynch poking fun at the activities that many people are guilty of using their phone for; including taking ‘selfies’, texting in the company of friends or during meals, and generally playing with their phones when they should be paying attention to what’s happening in front of them in the real world.

I will admit that I found the first ad by itself not that convincing, but after further research into the campaign, it turns out that part of Virgin’s efforts in ‘making mobile better’ is that they will donate to a food rescue service (OzHarvest) every time someone posts a picture of their food on social media using the hashtag #mealforameal. Aside from benefiting a great case, the campaign attempts to tap into some of the rising consumer trends in mobile phone use, and attempts to leverage them into positive actions. So instead of just ‘sharing’ a picture of your meal with your followers on social media, through Virgin’s campaign, you can now share a meal with someone who is in actual need of it.

It will be interesting to see how this campaign performs over the next three months, and given its feel good nature, I’m inclined to hope it does well – not only for Virgin, but also for OzHarvest, which annually feeds around 2 million Australians relying on food relief. We’ll be sure to come back to this campaign as it rolls out, but in the meantime, let me go get my phone and share something that will actually matter!

Find out more about the 'Making Mobile Better' campaign.

Salil Kumar
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School