How to deliver a key message: write it on the spokesperson’s pants

Baroness Thatcher’s passed on, North Korea’s about to end the world, and if you’re not snowed in you’re soaked though by the April showers. To be blunt, we need a laugh.

Queue Richard Branson, and one of his traditional stunt launches. Announcing Virgin Atlantic’s new domestic flight brand, Little Red, Branson took to a make-shift stage at Edinburgh airport and snowed everyone what he thought of the ‘stiff competition’ – check the image below.

The kilt wasn’t just for easy revealing –Little Red brand will fly from Edinburgh and Aberdeen to London, as well as from Manchester. Any link between the name Little Red and the contents or Branson’s undercrackers has not been confirmed.

Tongue-in-cheek launches aside, the reference to ‘stiff competition’ is not just for punnage. Branson has struggled to secure domestic short-haul slots at Heathrow for some time, slots that are vital for an airline wanting to compete with BA.

The Independent quotes Branson, “We need that in order to compete properly with BA – we can now feed passengers into Heathrow and into our 30 long-haul services to the Far East, Australasia and America. But for some bizarre reason the competition authorities didn’t give us [London to] Glasgow slots, so BA still has the monopoly on that route”.

Good lesson for PRs: key messages are sometimes best delivered via the spokesperson’s pants.

Image credit: Mail Online (click the link if you feel the need for a close up). Agency @brayleino was behind the stunt.

Travel