Virgin Red: Bringing the family together to reward loyalty

Virgin is a brand with big ambitions and a big family.

Offering everything from books to gyms to space travel, Virgin is a house of brands like no other.

And now, they are going further to tie the family together – launching a new loyalty scheme, Virgin Red, to reward customers for their interactions across all virgin companies.

Whether shopping in a Virgin Megastore, flying with Virgin Atlantic or talking on Virgin Mobile, users will now be eligible for rewards from the whole Virgin family, within a single app.

Virgin has tried bringing its brands together before, launching Virgin Radio on board a Virgin Train sponsored by Virgin Mobile earlier this year, but never anything on this scale.

Virgin Red’s head of marketing Helen Tupper explains such synergy “rarely happens because each of the businesses has their own agendas and targets. If we can create something that all the Virgin companies can authentically get involved in then it is powerful for the brand. That is a powerful way of activating the Virgin brand.”

She said “The loyalty programme is designed to encourage multiple relationships. We have known for a long time that this is the right thing to do from a customer and business perspective. But we wanted something efficient, engaging and that felt Virgin-like.”

Virgin have found a way to bring a scattered family of brands together, meaning they can offer their customers more and keep the relationship between brands and customers going much, much further.