SOURCE: Press Release

(London, England) — Virgin Games today announced that it has won a coveted D&AD ‘Yellow Pencil’ award in this year’s ‘Online Advertising’ category for its groundbreaking Virgin Casino interactive video ad campaign.

The D&AD Awards*, widely known as the ‘Pencils’, is one of the most internationally respected awards within the design and advertising industry, recognising the very best campaigns from around the world. Virgin Games was one of only 59 companies to receive a ‘Yellow Pencil’ out of over 25,000 pieces of work entered, and one of only two companies to receive a pencil for Online Advertising this year. No other online gaming company was even nominated for an award.

The winning Virgin Casino campaign was created by online advertising agency Lean Mean Fighting Machine and is based around a series of ‘twisted’ interpretations of common terms found in casinos. Using members of the Perrier Award-nominated comedy troupe, The Dutch Elm Conservatoire, each advertising execution allows the consumer to click a button and see the effects of a particular casino term – such as ‘Hit’, ‘Stand’, ‘Double Down’, ‘All-in’ and ‘Spin’ - played out in streaming video.

The D&AD ‘Yellow Pencil’ topped an extraordinary year for Virgin Casino’s online advertising campaign. Earlier in May, the campaign won one of only two ‘Silver Pencil’ awards in the ‘Business to Consumer’ online advertising category at the One Show Interactive Awards**. Virgin Games’ innovative casino campaign also won one of only two ‘Gold’ awards in the European Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions Creative Awards*** - the top award achievable at this event.

Winning ‘Gold’ at the Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions Creative Awards has now sent Virgin Casino’s campaign through to the Cyber Lions 2007, where the team will be hoping to add to the campaign’s success as they compete with the very best in international online advertising at Cannes’ prestigious awards festival.

Simon Burridge, CEO of Virgin Games, comments; “The commercial success of our Virgin Casino online advertising campaign has been proven – it’s our most successful in terms of interaction and registrations to date. To win three awards and a coveted ‘Yellow Pencil’ for the campaign is icing on the cake for us and shows that creativity and effectiveness really can work hand in hand online, in this case to both our and our customers’ benefit.”

Lean Mean Fighting Machine’s Creative Director, Sam Ball says; “To be recognised and awarded for our work, not once but three times this year, is a great achievement and reflects the creative talent we have in the team. Virgin Games are a great client to work for as they like to have fun with their advertising briefs, allowing us both the creative and technical scope to design entertaining campaigns such as this one.”

Virgin Casino’s online advertising campaign launched in July 2006 on key websites including MSN UK, Yahoo UK and Orange.