THE CHALLENGE
When a company becomes part of the Virgin brand, customer expectations of levels of service and approach radically increase. Virgin had already undertaken a significant ‘brand engagement programme to bring their values to life but they were still seeing as little more than ‘a marketing thing.’
The real question was just how do you ‘create amazing’ whilst pushing a trolley up a crowded train, or dealing with the congestion caused by another signalling failure?
Our brief was to quickly and effectively help the entire Virgin West Coast workforce understand what being Virgin really meant and how radically it could change behaviours.
WHAT WE DID
First we designed and piloted workshop sessions for key influencers, giving them a chance to share together what Create Amazing might look and feel like, as well as providing tools to bring others on the journey too.
Next up, we designed the Create Amazing app which captured people’s personal stories of what Amazing can look like, as well as giving more information about each value. Highly accessible and using social media/gamification approaches to the full, everyone now had a chance to share, shine and learn together.
THE RESULTS
Like all the best digital growth success stories, use of the Create Amazing app grew organically, creating a powerful sense of community which was further supported by digital communication and promotional events.
Six months after its launch, the app had 1200 users and showcased the same number of stories. Such high levels of interaction powerfully encouraged quality conversations about performance — line managers, able to see their own team’s stories, were encouraged to comment on them and refer to them in performance review and team meetings. Peer-to-peer recognition, with comments and likes a regular feature, helped to make this very much the people’s collective success story.
With so many practical Create Amazing stories showcased, the Virgin values had truly become the powerful driving force for positive change and improved performance they were always intended to be.
