Case Study: Virgin Media O2 achieves rapid user growth and boosts employee engagement with Firstup

How Virgin Media O2 supercharged its employee engagement

Virgin Media O2, one of the UK’s largest broadband and telecoms employers, faced a tough internal communications challenge after announcing it would not reintroduce daily EU roaming charges. In a pandemic-era environment where employees were isolated and harder to reach, the company needed to rapidly raise awareness, teach staff how to explain the new roaming rules, and spread the message organically with minimal spend.

They ran a two-day internal competition, “Don’t Miss The Boat” (Feb 16), offering a Mediterranean cruise as the prize; employees entered by posting #dontmisstheboat and uploading a screenshot to Firstup, with winners revealed via a livestream raffle. The organic campaign drove 750 new Firstup registrations during the competition (platform users rose to nearly 4,000), generated just shy of 500,000 impressions, increased margin by just under 25%, and ultimately grew new user count to about 1,300—significantly outperforming a prior smartwatch campaign that added ~500 users.

Virgin Media O2

Abs Kakkar

Head of Channels