Melanie White, Virgin Experience Gifts: Finding Your Why and Making Memories

04/21/22 • 29 min

Melanie White, executive vice president of Virgin Experience Gifts, shares insights from the experiential gifting field about where the market is headed and how Virgin experience gifts is leading the way in the U.S. market.

Among her remarks:

Melanie left her successful career in the fashion industry to find her "why" and search for something more meaningful. She talks about how providing curated experiences to enrich peoples' lives has been fulfilling.
Virgin Experience Gifts is seeking to lead the way in forging the concept of experiential gifting: providing specially curated, experiential gift-giving that people can purchase for a friend, colleague or loved one.
The COVID pandemic has left Americans with a pent-up desire for travel and adventure. This is helping Virgin Experience Gifts and experiential gifting succeed despite the pandemic.
Woman are some of the top customers, buying experiences for spouses, friends and children.
Millennials and Gen Z are driving the trend toward experiences over traditional "things" as gifts.
Consumers are incredibly diverse. Virgin Experience Gifts is tapping into this diversity by offering experiences across the spectrum on price point and interest.
Experiential gifting is not only more meaningful and unique, but it's also sustainable. Americans are attracted to a more minimal approach to acquiring stuff, and helping to eliminate the clutter.
Virgin Experience Gifts sees their platform as a major opportunity for providers, destinations and retail labels. Virgin Experience Gifts could be a low-risk sales platform for them and a source of referral.
Virgin Experience Gifts as a brand is in a hyper growth phase and sees big things on the horizon in the coming years.

Discover Fletcher Marketing PR:

Post your questions and comments about the podcast, via #MsInterPReted
Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on Twitter: @FletcherPR
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Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Fletchermarketingpr
Follow Virgin Experience Gifts on Twitter: @VirginExpGifts
Follow Kelly Fletcher on Twitter: @KDfletcher
Follow Mary Beth West on Twitter: @marybethwest

Among her remarks:

Melanie left her successful career in the fashion industry to find her "why" and search for something more meaningful. She talks about how providing curated experiences to enrich peoples' lives has been fulfilling.
Virgin Experience Gifts is seeking to lead the way in forging the concept of experiential gifting: providing specially curated, experiential gift-giving that people can purchase for a friend, colleague or loved one.
The COVID pandemic has left Americans with a pent-up desire for travel and adventure. This is helping Virgin Experience Gifts and experiential gifting succeed despite the pandemic.
Woman are some of the top customers, buying experiences for spouses, friends and children.
Millennials and Gen Z are driving the trend toward experiences over traditional "things" as gifts.
Consumers are incredibly diverse. Virgin Experience Gifts is tapping into this diversity by offering experiences across the spectrum on price point and interest.
Experiential gifting is not only more meaningful and unique, but it's also sustainable. Americans are attracted to a more minimal approach to acquiring stuff, and helping to eliminate the clutter.
Virgin Experience Gifts sees their platform as a major opportunity for providers, destinations and retail labels. Virgin Experience Gifts could be a low-risk sales platform for them and a source of referral.
Virgin Experience Gifts as a brand is in a hyper growth phase and sees big things on the horizon in the coming years.

Discover Fletcher Marketing PR:

Post your questions and comments about the podcast, via #MsInterPReted
Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on Twitter: @FletcherPR
Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on Instagram: fletcher.pr
Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Fletchermarketingpr
Follow Virgin Experience Gifts on Twitter: @VirginExpGifts
Follow Kelly Fletcher on Twitter: @KDfletcher
Follow Mary Beth West on Twitter: @marybethwest

Previous Episode

Allison Lester: From the Newsroom to PR's Front Line

Allison Lester -- director of media relations for Fletcher Marketing PR -- shares insights on transitioning from the pressures and challenges of years working in a media newsroom environment to the front lines of PR strategy and media relations execution for a PR firm.

Among her remarks:

How deadline-driven environments of the newsroom differ from deadlines / workload in PR
Ways in which lifestyle / work-life balance stresses differ on the two "sides," particularly given the pandemic
What "pet peeves" she encountered from PR firms back in her newsroom days
Aspects of pitching for topical / timing relevance to be realistic and newsroom-friendly
What it means to deliver for clients on media relations content and availability
Best-practices in media contact-development
Practical considerations (such as lead times) that build parameters around what a news outlet will (or even can) cover
How to "turn lemons to lemonade" when media rejection of a pitch can still present a relationship-building opportunity with a reporter
Differences between needs / opportunities for newsrooms working across different formats (print, broadcast, digital)

Discover Fletcher Marketing PR:

Post your questions and comments about the podcast, via #MsInterPReted
Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on Twitter: @FletcherPR
Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on Instagram: fletcher.pr
Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Fletchermarketingpr
Follow Allison Lester on Twitter: @ALesterTN
Follow Kelly Fletcher on Twitter: @KDfletcher
Follow Mary Beth West on Twitter: @marybethwest

Next Episode

Greg Gallant: Muckrack's State of Journalism 2022

The past few years have been tumultuous in the journalism industry. From shrinking newsrooms, fragmentation, audience mistrust, COVID and other global crisis. Muckrack conducted its annual survey of more than 1,000 journalists to assess the state of journalism in 2022.
Greg Gallant is the co-founder and CEO of Muckrack and speaks on the company's annual report.

Greg talks about his career as an entrepreneur and how he navigated a career from philosophy to what he does now.
"Once you get to any meaningful scale, the number one job of being an entrepreneur or a CEO.
Is communicating ideas boiling down what's happening in the world and coming up with kind of a way to explain it and a way to position your company to be relevant."

Some key findings from the report:
Journalists are busier than ever and are covering more beats than ever before.
Journalists are more likely to respond to pitches in 2022 than they were in 2021.
Journalists feel trust from the public is improving.
Twitter is the go-to social media platform for journalists. But that's not where they want to get their pitches!
Greg offers some tips about how to use Twitter to connect with journalists and how to make authentic connections.
Greg addresses the gender gap in journalism and what his company is doing to combat the issue.
Finally, Kelly and Greg talk about leading in a remote world and the transition to remote work.