Our 14th Virgin Mobile project is an online viral and buzz marketing campaign to premiere Virgin Mobile’s latest coup - a new TV ad starring glamorous Pamela Anderson (aka “Pammy”) promoting Virgin Mobile’s new Mobile TV service on the innovative Lobster 700TV handset.

Michael Garvey, Virgin Mobile’s Advertising Manager, said:

Virgin Mobile is famous for making entertaining TV commercials that put celebrities in amusing and irreverent situations - from Wyclef Jean in the first of our Idle Thumbs series, to Busta Rhymes, Christina Aguilera, LL Cool J and Missy Elliot, and most recently Kate Moss. Pamela Anderson is the latest celebrity to get the ‘Virgin Mobile treatment’. She is a great sport, as well as a major TV and film star, making her a natural choice to launch our new Mobile TV service. We decided to premiere a special longer version of the Pammy TV ad online, using DMC’s online viral and buzz marketing expertise, to give everyone the chance to see it and to win a new Lobster 700TV handset like the one Pammy uses in the ad.

The amusing ad, created by Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R, will be broadcast only on British TV starting on Monday 9 October. A special 40-second edit showing more exclusive footage of Pammy’s pre-released online by DMC. The ad features Pammy relaxing by the pool at her luxury pad, watching ‘Corrie’ on her new Lobster 700TV phone. She is interrupted by a call from her agent who’s at a Mexican wrestling match, and the fun begins.

Our online viral and buzz marketing activity includes a campaign microsite from which the special online version of the ad is available for download. The microsite was designed by Start Creative and built by DMC. It enables visitors to enter a prize draw to win one of three Lobster 700TV handsets whose boxes have been autographed by Pammy. Copies of the online ad are also being seeded on entertainment and social networking sites. They invite viewers to click through to the microsite to enter the prize draw

Virgin Mobile is using a web-first strategy to kickstart buzz and maximise the viral spread of this exclusive celebrity material. The brand awareness and advocacy from the overall campaign is destined to be as huge as the wrestlers in the ad, and our online film tracking system will help quantify the impact of the online strand of activity.

You can see the ad and the rest of the site here.