Virgin Atlantic expanding in-house creative team to focus on "digital storytelling"

Date
5 April 2018

Virgin Atlantic is expanding its own in-house creative team to help develop the brand’s comms platform, working across graphic design, photography, motion graphics and film content. Headed up by Michael Stephens, who previously worked at i-D, Ted Baker and as head of graphic design at Liberty, the team will focus on digital content creation and what Michael calls “digital storytelling”, to shape how a new generation of consumers experiences Virgin Atlantic.

The team is recruiting new creatives to their in-house agency to work on its brand identity and new comms platform, with an emphasis on how to communicate the brand in the analogue and digital spaces, Michael explains. “[Virgin Atlantic] has such a strong and vivid personality already, but we need to ensure the brand is consistently fun, playful and feels fresh.” Consistency of the brand’s tone of voice is key, akin to a number of forward-thinking, international companies which are seeing the value of in-house design talent. “When communicating across multiple channels a brand’s identity can sometimes get diluted and, before you know it, those unique traits that made us famous in the first place have disappeared. That’s because of the work being spread across multiple agencies – there isn’t that coherence of creative overseeing the message.” Instead, this team will be dedicated to working alongside those agencies to create new, bold work with a congruous visual identity, while also experimenting with a mixture of media, to develop and enhance the brand’s narrative.

Like many brands, Virgin Atlantic’s requirement for content in photography, animation and film stretches far beyond what a brand like this would’ve been expected to produce just a few years ago. To make this happen, and for the work to be both creatively innovative and harmonious with the brand, Michael says it will be imperative to change ways of working. The brand will continue to work with their international roster of external agencies, but the in-house team will be collaborating on projects with its new unified ethos and approach. “We need to be more reactive, especially within the social space.” Hence why three of the four roles advertised for the new team are heavily digital focused. “It’s representative of the type of briefs coming in,” Michael explains. “We’d like to integrate digital into the creative process from the outset. Having those core skills as part of the foundations will hopefully futureproof us, for the time being at least!”

Those joining the new creative team will be working, among many projects, on a new comms platform in collaboration with AMV BBDO. Read more about the roles and Virgin Atlantic’s in-house creative team on our sister platform, If You Could Jobs: Senior Digital Designer, Creative Design Manager, Design Intern and Content Producer.

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