Stephen Fry stars in Virgin Media TiVo spot

Virgin Media is rolling out a multimillion kung-fu-themed advertising campaign starring Stephen Fry and Sir Richard Branson as the company looks to demonstrate the “lightning” speed of its Tivo service’s search functionality.

VMTiVo

The campaign launches on ITV this Saturday (14 July) and is the third in a series that has also featured actors David Tennant and Marc Warren.

Two separate ads will focus on aspects of the service, which launched in the UK last year, that the company has yet to promote.

The first spot promotes TiVo’s search offering and opens with the celebrity tweeter doing the splits, while dressed in kung-fu styled robes. Branson then throws a TV remote like a ninja star to Fry who catches it and begins searching for “everything kung fuey in the blink of an eye”.

A second follows Fry as he uses the service to select from a range of TV shows, movies and documentaries using TiVo’s WishList function.

Jeff Dodds, executive director of brand and marketing communications at Virgin Media, says: “Whilst the success of our previous ad campaigns has done a fantastic job in raising awareness of TiVo and some of its great features, such as a TV guide that goes backwards in time, our next step is to help even more people understand the many benefits of upgrading to TiVo. We think we’ve achieved this in a funny and memorable way.”

The BBH created ads will run online also and are the first from the company since the Advertising Standards Authority banned ads promoting its broadband service in May.

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