Virgin stakes claim for Qantas frequent flyers

AdNews reports that Virgin Australia has launched a through-the-line campaign to usher in its revamped Velocity frequent flyer program, and has rival airlines like Qantas in its sights.

The re-badged Virgin Australia launched a new platinum tier to its frequent flyer program and has made a play for Qantas members with a status match offer.

The Velocity Rewards program lets customers of competing airlines make the switch to Virgin, while retaining their status. But customers that do switch will have to keep flying with Virgin for a year in order to retain their status.

Virgin Australia group commercial executive Liz Savage said the program is being pushed with a multi-channel campaign.

"We used a whole combination of channels to get the message out there. We went out with social media first, which has become such a critically important part of our mix. It's a warm channel and its primed for us so when we want to share things like the status match program we can go directly to our audience with it."

Virgin, whose creative duties are handled by Clemenger DDBO Sydney, has followed up its social media blitz with a TVC, corporate word-of-mouth and print campaign.

The Velocity program has been redesigned to appeal to business people and families, an area Savage believed had been weak in competing airlines.

The system will allow families to automatically pool their points and status credits, as well as pause their membership for six months for parental leave without losing their status.

The status match program will only be available for a limited time however Savage said that the cut off would depend heavily on how well received it is.

In the year to June 2011 Virgin Australia Airlines spent an estimated $23.5 million on main media compared to $22.7 million the previous year.

While Qantas has decline to answer questions, AdNews understands from sources close to the airline that a counter offer could be on the cards.