Alternative media group Vice has snared a significant slice of Virgin Mobile's media spend with a year-long partnership to support Virgin's 'Making Mobile Better' campaign.
The partnership involves content sharing between Virgin and Vice with the telco charged with amplifying the main message behind its latest campaign.
“We'll be looking to generate a whole host of ways in which we can make mobile better through interesting and engaging content, we have our first content piece that's live at the moment with chef Andrew Levins and we've obviously got quite a bit a more to come,” director of Virgin Mobile brand and communications, Nicole Bardsley told AdNews.
Bardsley said the partnership was a perfect fit with the overall strategy behind the campaign.
“We were looking at partners that have a similar kind of value and Vice is very much doing things differently and we felt there was a natural synergy in that partnership.”
The 'Making Mobile Better' campaign which launched yesterday has several different aspects including a TVC staring Jane Lynch as well as an online video highlighting what would happen if we part took in social media behaviour without a mobile.
The second aspect of 'Making Mobile Better' is the #mealforameal campaign in which Virgin Mobile is partnering with charity OzHarvest to take the mobile behaviour of sharing photos of food on social media and turn it into an actual meal.
All users have to do is snap a photo of food and post it with the hashtag #mealforameal and Virgin Mobile will donate a real meal for someone in need.
“Social media is overflowing with pictures of food that people are sharing with one another and they're often eating really nice exotic food but the reality is that we're not really sharing in the real sense of the word.”
“There are over 2 million Australians who rely on food relief every year and 90% of food relief agencies are not able to meet that demand,” Bardsley said.
As part of the partnership Virgin Mobile aims to provide 400,000 meals over the length of the campaign, however, Bardsley explained that if Virgin met its goal it would be reassessed to continue to provide more assistance to OzHarvest.
“The more people we can get behind it the better, it's about raising awareness for the great work OzHarvest do, so once we've hit our goal who knows what will happen next.”
Bardsley said that the whole campaign came from the idea of creating a message which is social by design.
“We very much look for a really strong creative idea that is inherently shareable at the heart of it, that gets people talking and allows us to really amply and extend our message because we don't have the budgets the big guys do. So for us its really about the power of a great creative idea that gets people talking and engaging with your brand,” Bardsley said.
The campaign including the micro site makingmobilebetter.com.au went live yesterday, with the latest TVC set to launch this Sunday.
Watch the latest campaign video below.
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