Speed is working with the largest Virgin business-to-business brand, Virgin Media Business, to deliver a reputation-building strategy through integrated communications. Since the company’s launch in February 2010, Speed has helped enabled Virgin Media Business’ ground-breaking products, services and customer relations to build awareness and understanding through conventional and social media, as well as engage directly with customers through digital platforms.

As part of its mantra of shaking-up business telecoms in the UK, Virgin Media Business announced new services for cloud computing in September 2011. Our approach was to go against the industry grain of jargon and buzzwords to make it crystal clear what the services where and how they could help British firms.

The campaign objectives were equally simple:

• Gain the media’s full attention
• Show the difference of Virgin Media Business’ simplicity
• Present a clear business case for cloud computing
• Gain the interest of senior IT buyers

We applied the brand’s distinctive messaging to the launch of cloud computing by generating an enormous volume of content that stood out simply because it was simple – the usual telecoms fluff and frothy language were banned. We also stage-managed two experiential events for analysts and telecom journalists so they could commission cloud computing services themselves, demonstrating how easy they are to use.

To complement these physical events, Speed helped spread interest online, directly to customers and online influencers through a social media engagement programme. This featured a new LinkedIn group and a structured Twitter push that engaged 45,000 target people.

The results overachieved on the objectives with sparkling publicity and direct influence with targets, all borne of the content’s clarity. More than 100 pieces of editorial appeared, including in national newspapers. The vast majority compared Virgin Media Business favourably with its main rival BT and 85 per cent covered all the desired messages.