Business and Marketing

A seat on one of Virgin Galactic's first-planned space flights is first prize in a contest sponsored by Virool.

Does going weightless beat going viral?

Creatives who proclaim their concepts to be other-worldly or universal or just plain spacey now have the chance to put their Tricorders where their mouths are. Virool, a video content promoter, today announced a video contest that will award the winner a seat on one of Virgin Galactic's first private flights into outer space.

Brand marketers, creative directors, C-level executives, company owners, video producers, and all other comers are invited to Virool's contest site to register for more information about submitting their entries. No creative ground rules have been established by Virool, which is looking simply for entrants' best campaigns. Promotional materials say that the contest is challenging “top creatives to push the outer limits of their imagination, launch their most original space-themed video campaigns, and boldly go where no agency or brand has gone before.”

Virgin CEO Richard Branson has promised that initial flights will commence this year, though Galactic still needs to pass several tests to win a Federal Aviation Administration license. Some 700 people, including Tom Hanks and Angelina Jolie, have paid up to $260,000 to reserve seats on one of the first flights, which will venture 62 miles above the Earth and feature about five minutes of weightlessness.

Business Breaking News: Once Upon a Time: Successful Online Ads Tell a Story

Ads that tell a story have the greatest impact on consumers, new research suggests.

Digital media ad campaigns that tell a brand story before asking people to buy something are significantly more effective than ads that immediately encourage people to take an action, the study shows. Results come from research by Facebook and the social media advertising technology firm Adaptly.

For the study, researchers generated two ad campaigns on Facebook for Refinery29, an independent fashion and lifestyle website, and then compared the rate of email subscriptions and visits to the ads' landing pages.

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