We caught up with Loewy’s chairman Will Whitehorn this afternoon when he visited Speed. He has spent the last 30 years in frontline PR jobs, latterly at Virgin leading the Galactic project.

Grabbing attention on the web and digital customer communities are the future of the PR industry according to Will.

During his career Will has dealt with everything from the Cumbria train crash in 2007 to British Airway’s aggressive marketing tactics on the launch of Virgin Atlantic.

Virgin Galactic was created in 2004 to sell the promise of space tourism and a ride on the first commercial space craft.

“The job was to find 100 high net-worth customers in the first six months willing to pay $200,000 for a trip into space. We told a story and sold a dream using PR as our single means of marketing,” said Will.

“We generated attention by enabling journalists and bloggers to share the experience insofar as possible and by creating big events around key milestones such as test flights,” he added.

Galactic now has 400 customers waiting to take a three-minute flight into space in 2012 when the spacecraft launches. Before then customers have the opportunity to speak to each other via what is surely must be the world’s most exclusive social network.

“2004 was the year that Facebook launched. We launched the Galactic web site with a community for our customers. That enables customers to talk to each other and share their view with the Galactic team,” said Will.

Will has booked his place alongside the first astronauts. He’s packed his kilt and plans to be the first Scot, and as PR Week reported last year, the first PR professional, in space.