Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd. launched a WAP site and ran a mobile marketing campaign to promote its transatlantic offering between New York and London.

The 'Love From Above' mobile campaign was implemented and managed by GroupM's mobile marketing agency Kinetic Mobile, which recently rebranded as Joule. Armed with a desire to spread 'love' and to promote the British airline's new premium economy seats using mobile, Joule worked closely with Virgin Atlantic and its creative agency McKinney to challenge travelers' expectations for air travel.

"Joule worked in partnership with creative agency McKinney and online partner MEC to deliver a mobile campaign, which delivered significant cut-through for our client Virgin Atlantic," said Michael Collins, CEO of Joule, New York.

Joule's mobile campaign included advertising that drove traffic to Virgin Atlantic's first WAP site, which is accessible by Web-enabled mobile devices.

The site provides information on other aspects of the campaign, including complimentary taxi rides in wrapped London cabs, British pub events, free movie passes, reminders, a photo gallery, ringtones and wallpapers.

The mobile content also provided coupons for movie tickets, SMS sweepstakes and SMS trivia games.

Virgin Atlantic is one of the world's leading long-haul airlines.

The airline flies to 30 destinations worldwide -- including North America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Australia -- from its main bases at London Heathrow and London Gatwick airports. It has a smaller base at Manchester Airport.

There are 38 aircraft in its fleet, comprising 747-400s, A340-600s and A340-300s.

Sir Richard Branson is the founder and president of Virgin Atlantic and Steve Ridgway is the CEO.

The airline is 51 percent owned by Sir Richard's Virgin Group and 49 percent by Singapore Airlines.

In 2007, Virgin Atlantic carried around 6 million passengers. Figures for last year are not available yet.

Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group also runs mobile virtual network operator Virgin Mobile USA, a wireless entertainment service and mobile phone company that is a joint-venture with Sprint Nextel.

Virgin Mobile USA uses Sprint's CDMA-based Personal Communications Service network.

Virgin Mobile USA began operating in the summer of 2002 and was one of the first companies in the United States to offer prepaid cellular service, and was the first prepaid-only provider.

Virgin Mobile USA had approximately 5.38 million users in 2008.

Crowing Joule
GroupM is a global media investment management operation. It serves as the parent company to WPP media agencies including MAXUS, MediaCom, Mediaedge:cia and Mindshare.

Joule, established in 2007 as Kinetic Mobile, will continue to offer advertisers and agencies a full range of mobile marketing services, from campaign strategy through implementation and measurement across all mobile channels.

The recent rebranding coincides with the repositioning of Joule as an independent agency within the GroupM network that will act as GroupM's preferred partner for the execution of mobile marketing campaigns.

"We're GroupM's centralized agency for out-of-home experiential media to reaching people on the move," Mr. Collins said. "GroupM decided that it would make sense for us to service other GroupM agencies and embed staff from Joule within agencies to augment their mobile expertise.

"About half of our business comes from outside of GroupM, which allows us to establish our own identity in the marketplace," he said. "The mobile services that Joule provides can be a tremendous benefit to clients, making their dollars work harder.

"We can incorporate mobile into out-of-home and print advertising, taking what was passive and making it interactive by adding a mobile component to extend clients' services."

Joule also offers mobile media planning and buying services.

"Mobile also provides additional revenue streams that GroupM can get involved in, for example with mobile CRM and loyalty programs," Mr. Collins said. "Mobile is one more digital touch-point for communication.

"Mobile is a great way to open up new avenues -- to open up a dialog with consumers," he said.

Joule is a division of Kinetic Worldwide, a 50-50 joint venture between WPP and the previous shareholders of Poster Publicity.

Kinetic Worldwide had global billings of $4.4 billion.

Joule's offices in New York and London serve clients across the Americas and Europe. Global operations are headquartered in New York.

In addition to Virgin Atlantic, Joule's client list includes Unilever, a multinational Anglo-Dutch company that owns consumer product brands in the food and beverage, cleaning agents and personal care products industries.

"The growing number of brands employing mobile marketing in the current economic climate is a testament to the power and value of this channel," Joule's Mr. Collins said. "Joule looks forward to working with clients to deliver on the tremendous value of mobile, which we believe will prove to be an integral part of maximizing marketing investment now and in the future."