Virgin Blue has taken out a prestigious award at the 2006 Marketing and Interactive Excellence (MIXX) Awards for its dynamic on-line campaign that was launched this year as part of the airline's move to complement its existing traditional press, TV and billboard advertising.

The airline picked up a silver award in the special campaign (International) category, coming in just behind global giant, The Coca-Cola Company, and ahead of brand guru, Nike, which took out the bronze award.

Virgin Blue Marketing Manager, Darren Wright, said, "The strategy to use on-line marketing especially for our retail campaigns reflects the airline's need to be able to promote our value-based fares and still be reactive to competitor activity."

This is the first time Virgin Blue has focused its attention on on-line advertising across a period of six months, with placements avoiding the obvious travel sections in favour of the high reach news and entertainment sections of Australia's leading portals, including ninemsn, news.com.au, shm.com.au, theage.com.au, yahoo and msn messenger.

This has enabled Virgin Blue to leverage the flexible nature of e-marketing and manage fare prices in light of changing daily trends.

The award-winning campaign used animated characters in various real-life office situations promoting different messages at different times of the day making Virgin Blue the first airline in Australia to dynamically update its fares in real-time online ads.

Darren Wright continued, "Being placed in the same league as Coca-Cola and Nike, who are the world global giants of marketing, is a huge honour for the Virgin Blue Marketing team, especially as we are new to the on-line interactive advertising arena and had a very modest budget. It validates our strategy of being relevant, reactive and finding new ways to bring immediacy and flexibility to our advertising messages."

Virgin Blue's commitment to on-line innovation is also reflected in a range of recently launched initiatives, including being the first airline in Australia to launch web-check in.