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By Alex, August 21, 2012 3:22 pm

We had a fantastic first visit to V Festival at Hylands Park in Essex where we tethered a balloon at the weekend and what a scorcher it was!

Guests from the brilliant Virgin Media Louder Lounge enjoyed rides in the blazing sun and we rubbed shoulders with celebrities including actor Billy Piper, singer Sophie Ellis Bexter, actor Ralph Little and boy band One Direction, who were all at the event.

We also provided some additional entertainment for the crowd who could see our balloon from the main stage, bobbing away to music from the likes of Tom Jones and Snow Patrol. Our balloon looked particularly spectacular as it lit up in the dusky gloom.

It was a fantastic way to mark 25 years since Sir Richard Branson and co-pilot Per Lindstrand did the first transatlantic balloon flight – making Virgin synonymous with hot ballooning forevermore.

Thanks to everyone who flew with us, who tweeted us and the Virgin Media team who made us feel so welcome.

If you would like to experience a hot air balloon ride over Essex visit our website.

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By Kirsty, August 2, 2011 11:27 am

Virgin Balloon Flights have been supporting our friends at Virgin Media, who have raised a whopping £5,137 through a national staff raffle as part of their Charity Day on 20th July.

The raffle was a major element of Virgin Media’s first ever Charity Day and caused a lot of interest with generous prizes donated by us Virgin Balloon Flights, V Festival and Virgin Money. We sent off a pair of Champagne balloon flights to medias cause worth over £300! The national flight vouchers means the lucky winner can use them at anyone of our 100+ launch sites in England, Scotland & Wales and enjoy a glass of bubbles and receive a personalised flight certificate signed by their pilot post flight.

As well as the raffle, activities ran across 60 sites across the UK and 7 abroad, involving over 12,000 staff as well as partners, customers and members of the public. Initiatives ranged from Hawaiian fancy dress to hula hooping competitions to sponge-soaking of senior staff! The total for all activity across the day exceeded £45,000.

Local staff elections were held across the different sites to decide which charities were supported by the activity. There will be over 90 charities benefiting from the total sum of money … WELL DONE VIRGIN MEDIA!

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By Eve, April 28, 2011 3:04 pm

It’s not every day  that us Virgin folk get the chance to all work together under one roof. Spread out all over the UK we sometimes meet for meetings but never before have we met in one place to work towards one common objective for the good of the brand.

Enter, the Virgin Social Marathon! The very day after the Virgin London Marathon, on Monday 18th April 2011, Richard Branson kicked off a day of social interaction with a difference with a video tweet.

Virgin Media turned charitable private member’s club The House of St Barnabas in London’s chic Soho into ‘Our House’; the ultra fast 100Mb fibre optic broadband came in very handy with all of us tweeting for 7 hours non-stop!

Virgin’s digital teams tweeted and Facebooked their collective fans and followers to build brand awareness, grow fan bases, start the Twitter trend #ifvirgindid to encourage new ideas for the Virgin group and to give away the Ultimate Virgin Lifestyle Prize which included amongst other things a place in the 2012 Virgin London Marathon, flights to New York, balloon flights and free Virgin Active gym membership (lucky Tom Chalet won!).

Richard Branson’s famous ‘RBT’ mugs were dished out to people who tweeted photos of themselves with their boring old office mugs or who actually came to Our House for a cuppa with us.  The guys back at the office got stuck in too.

Nobby the pilot and his passengers achieved the accolade of ‘highest tea break’ with a photo of his passengers enjoying a tea break in the sky.

Even singer Josh Groban made an appearance and got tweeting too…

Virgin Balloon Flights gave away prizes to people who got involved online including David Cruise from California who only seemed to sleep for a few hours before waking and tweeting us again, local Social Media expert Jan Minihane who published a blog post on her site about the event and Michaela who tweeted that she would most like Alan Carr #inmyballoon.

We particularly liked the post by one budding entrepreneur who tweeted #ifvirgindid Olive Oil, which made us chuckle.

The day was a great success in scoring yet another Virgin first, raising our profile across the social media networks, increasing all of our fans and followers online but most of all we would like to say how amazing it was for all of us to just work together in one place, let’s hope it’s not the last time.