2018 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

We developed a festive-season story of a boy with a passion for trains who is dreaming of a special gift. His imagination takes us on the journey of the Red Express - a magical gifts-laden train. Traveling from the North Pole through the cultural and historical landmarks of the Middle East, the train eventually arrives to the heart of Dubai. The culmination of its journey is the festive center of Dubai with its iconic Burj Khalifa where it releases gifts over the city. The idea for the story was to build on the traditional magic related to the season and to link it to the regional, local context in a meaningful way for the Virgin Megastore brand. The Red Express was the link that made this possible. The train became a symbol of the brand with its matching color and because it was bringing gifts, on time, with express delivery.

Creative Execution

A visual style representing childlike playfulness and traditional festivity was achieved by a sequence of ten hand-drawn illustrations. Each artwork started as a black and white sketch which made compositions easy to revise before the coloring started. The canvases were A3-sized, large enough for the details to be preserved in the scanning process. After the physical artworks were scanned, they were layered and animated in 2.5D to bring the story to life. To keep the animation dynamic and rich with content, particular attention was given to particles systems and the motion of layers and the camera. In line with the Virgin brand, special attention was given to the artworks’ color theme of reds and complimentary purple and blue hues.

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

Two weeks after publishing, by December 24, the animation was viewed 35,000 times across YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. In each case, the animation was linked to the Virgin Megastore holiday gifts e-commerce store. This made it easy for customers to find and buy festive-period gifts online and contributed to visits, sales and brand awareness for Virgin Megastore. The multicultural character of the Red Express story linking distant places and cultures resulted in a holiday season brand proposition relevant to a very broad target audience. This worked well in the context of our different markets with varying degrees of native and expat residents.

We created the Red Express to win shoppers' hearts and minds in a multicultural holiday season with an all-inclusive festive story. Our target audience was everyone shopping for gifts in the holiday season, both in stores and online. The main campaign element was the animation of the Red Express. This was published on all of the brand's online channels including YouTube and social media. In every case, the animation was used to direct our audience to our online Holiday Gift Guide. To compliment the online campaign, Virgin Megastore's physical stores were branded with artworks from the Red Express journey. Matching shopping bags, gift cards and collector's stickers were also produced. Finally, dedicated front areas in the biggest stores had complete glowing Red Express train replicas, attracting many shoppers to take photos.