Rebecca Broomfield

0:29 Sh hello everyone so as Rob says I'm here to talk about April's Fool's Day and we did an April fall last year for Virgin Atlantic when they launched their domestic Airline little red we had to do something that was big that was going to grab attention around the world to let people know that Virgin Atlantic was now operating in the UK because they're so synonymous with being a long haul Airline so April Fool's Day I didn't really know where it came from but it's quite a an interesting story lots of people aren't really sure if it's true but apparently in the 15th century France changed their calendar so instead of celebrating the new year on the 1 of April as they always had it moved to the 1st of January now.

1:30 There were lots of people who didn't like this change and were quite stubborn and didn't want to move to the 1st of January so they became known as April fools now in PR April fools day is a bit of a bunfight really it's a great opportunity for Brands to express their personality if they've got one and pretend they have one if they don't it's also quite tricky because I don't know if anyone in here Works in PR but the nature of PR is that you get coverage in the newspaper so you've got a Stern journalist as the middleman to getting your story on the page so how a PR selling would normally go is I've got this story and will you write about it for me with an April Fool you have to lie because you're Essen essentially telling them something. That's not true and they're trying to see through it.

2:23 So we had to think of a way around this now virgin is synonymous with April fools as well I think probably if you were asked of a brand that had done many over the years it would be the one that's that comes to mind so this was one of the first when Richard decided for fun to fly a UFO over London people thought it was actually true now I don't think if there was a UFO that's what it would look like but some people were convinced this one was quite an interesting one this is when Pepsi were turning their cans blue for the first time so virgin and cola did an April full story that when their Coke was flat the camera was going to turn blue we then had Virgin Atlantic in the late 1990s who were going to advertise on butterflies Virgin Media who were sending ferrets underground to install their fiber optic Brewer band Richard Branson buying Pluto just because no real commercial objective with that one Virgin America scratch and sniff credit card virgin active first animal gym and Virgin Atlantic again launching still champagne so I hope you're getting a picture here of the fact that. Basically Richard Branson loves an April fall. And this is the one that came the year before ours in 2012 so I don't know if anyone remembers this one but this was almost step two to Virgin Galactic which actually.

3:58 Actually is a real thing but Richard was going to give people the opportunity to travel to the Center of the Earth in a volcano now this one did really well. And this was the one that was sort of held up as the example for us. And I think probably if I'm being really honest when we pitched this idea we didn't really appreciate just how much Richard loved in April fall April Fool's Day fell on Easter Monday last year.

4:26 So we were still getting emails from Richard on Easter Sunday with builds to the story like three glasses of wine down. So it was quite stressful and I'm really pleased to I'm not doing an April Fool story this year.

4:39 But we've got a bit of a video that kind of sums up what our April Fool was but essentially the message that we needed to communicate was that Virgin Atlantic little red was in the UK and this is what we did so virgin put out a statement that they have created a new plane but the plane has got a glass bottom a specially modified Airbus A320 passenger airliner with a glass floor to give passengers a panoramic view of whatever they're flying over from today the heath thr flight to abedine they've commissioned a special jet so that Flyers can see the view 33,000 ft and they've been given special permission.

6:01 So that they can fly over lock nest in the mirror there is apparently a new plane an E320 it's a oneoff. And it has a glass floor so that you can see out or down.

6:11 And then they say is to fly over Lo Nest on a special London flying yes he is announcing it. And I think this is possibly to do with the fact that Virgin Atlantic has just become Britain's newest domestic Airline what about Richard Branson's new Venture glass bottomed airplane but that's gen somebody should phone him yeah yeah yeah law flight silver lock nness I think is what they're going to include as well.

6:35 But anyway it was good it was good it.

6:48 So that was the April fall I think the way that we went about it I mentioned earlier about the fact that we didn't want to have to lie to journalists so we got we let the mirror in on the the secret and persuaded them that instead of doing their usual paper April Fool they would support it support us on ours and that just meant that we got complete control over the messaging the client was really nervous that this would just become a virgin brandstone and it wouldn't actually support their commercial objective so that was really important for them why do I think it worked there's so many April fools put out every year I think the Magic ingredients behind this one were the fact that it was simple you could explain it in a tweet it was really visual the Virgin Atlantic design team did a great job at kind of mocking up what it would look like and I think a Picture Tells a thousand words and also it helped with the con we let the mirror in on the secret as I said which was really critical to make sure that we had that credible news source I think if this had just come for Richard given his colorful history of April fools which I showed you there probably would have been a bit more reticence about it.

7:58 But that gave us that credibility and then we obviously milked all of the Virgin social channels as much as we could we also persuaded all the other virgin companies within the group to support us.

8:10 So we had all of their social media feed supporting it so virgin win for example said that they were going to be producing lock Merlo to support the FL and everyone had their own spin on it which just helped F the momentum behind of the story and finally I think the most important thing is that an April fall has to be right on that line of is actually true and a lot of the stuff that we saw on Twitter was people saying reporting it like it was real and the China thing was really just the duel in the crown for us because their national state television service actually ran it as a real story which gave us another opportunity to go out to the media and get a second hit about why it was such a great April Fool and then in all of those pieces in all of the national newspapers on the second of April we were kind of held up there as the one bit of guessing so I'm really excited to see what happened on April the first this year.

9:09 But imaginations like this thank you that