Ad review: Virgin Airlines "Bring on Wonderful"

 Again, feeling my marketing roots I've been finding some ads interesting. At least the first 5~10 times I see them, the 11~200th times is another matter.

Here's the Ad I'll be reviewing today:

Yes, this ad appeals to me both as a marketer and economist. By appeal I mean car crash appeal, and by car crash I am referring to society, not Virgin Airlines ability to make money in the Australian market.

This ad is just so brazen it deserves a medel of some kind. I'm laughing as I type. Let's break it down together.

Air travel sucks now, but its cheap, I have no memory of what it used to cost to fly domestic legs in Australia I'm not old enough to recall paying for Qantas or Ansett flights. I am old enough to remember being served meals and drinks and getting blood noses with the sudden change of altitude. That was flying economy in Australia in the late 80s thru early to mid 90s.

I'm confident by this point the only people who aren't familiar with air travels descent from old-world class warfare trophy to basically a bus service with a butt load of safety protocols. In many cases becoming something that was cheaper than the public transport option to the airport. Certainly my Ryan air flights from Pisa to Sicily and Catalan cost less than the Trenitalia fares from Genova to Pisa.

Virgin Air have adopted the bold strategy in 2024 of trying to make Air travel great again. Albeit this divisive slogan has been reworked into "bring on wonderful".

Of course, what makes Air travel hell, are seldom the airlines and more often our fellow airtravellers. The people who try to move house via carry on luggage. The people who god damn it paid to sit in a reclining chair and they are damn well going to recline their chair for every second of the flight including take off and landing, and if that means they have to pretend to be comatose as a stewardess tries to shake them awake, then that's a hill they will gladly die on. The people who just line up to board no matter what section their boarding pass says and what section has been called, exploiting the fact that the minimal staff know it causes less of a delay to just wave them through than to have them removed from the line.

And how is Virgin going to "bring on wonderful"? Well it's not going to take the form of greater leg room and less passangers per flight, it's not going to take the form of free inflight entertainment for domestic travel, nor snacks, drinks and meals being included in the ticket price.

No, the burden of wonderful falls squarely on the Virgin staffs shoulders.

Again, the Virgin ad clearly is in the safe legal territory of "Puffery" where nobody of sound mind genuinely expects to look out their window and see the ground crew break into dance for their amusement. 

But Virgin are trying to establish a competitive advantage on the quality of customer service, meaning that the key variable in a passengers experience of a Virgin flight will be incumbent on front line staff.

Now I neither expect Virgin Airlines to have ratched up the job requirements of being a steward or stewardess to the same as Concierge at a luxury hotel, nor do I expect Virgin airlines to have announced massive payrises for frontline or for that matter any staff. I do not expect "bringing on wonderful" to correspond with any significant price hike that reasonable, modest and socially conscious Australian consumers will gladly pay for the wonderment of air travel on a budget airline.

No, this ad in particular lays the burden of the strain felt between idiot parents going through their idiot daughter's awkward and uncomfortable phase (that now can be expected to last into the 40s) upon low paid ground staff who are already under tremendous pressure to keep things running on schedule without losing any luggage while meeting all safety requirements as cheaply as possible.

This ad is literally "the suits decided it would be a good idea for frontline staff to work unpaid involuntary overtime" announced in ad form. 

So rather, my amazement and enjoyment of this ad is revelling in the fact that exploiting the working class has become so normalized in our society that everyone thought this ad was a good idea. Just squeeze more out of job-insecure people who live in suburbs that planes fly over because if they'd just worked harder then maybe they could have been born rich like we were.