• by Aaron Baar , May 3, 2011

Nearly everyone knows of Brangelina. Many still remember the dear-departed Bennifer. And those really in the know have heard of Speidi. It's now time to get ready for Sparah, the combination of two unknowns, Spencer Falls and Sarah Carroll, whom Virgin Mobile is looking to make into the next celebrity couple.

The two strangers, who were selected after a casting call of thousands, are the centerpiece of a new advertising and marketing campaign from Virgin Mobile. The campaign encourages consumers to "Keep up with Sparah," via commercials, digital webisodes, social media and other advertising. Like any celebrity couple, Sparah will have a house in the Hollywood Hills, a stylist and publicist (all provided by Virgin Mobile) as they try to achieve their A-List dreams.

"It's our way of launching a unique campaign in a world of quality sameness. We wanted to create something that was a little more breakthrough, that could illustrate our Android phones [and talk about] something beyond price and without bashing the competition," Ron Faris, director of brand marketing for Virgin Mobile USA, tells Marketing Daily. "Whereas most of our competitors would buy celebrities as endorsers, we thought it would be fun to watch two people grow into celebrities."

A television commercial introducing the couple features Virgin Mobile executives having a teleconference with Virgin Mobile founder Sir Richard Branson. The executives suggest that Virgin Mobile's Beyond Talk plans give them access to so much data and the ability to follow their favorite celebrity gossip that they will run out of celebrities before they run out of data. "Well, we'll have to invent some celebrities, then," Branson says before signing off. The commercial cuts to Falls and Carroll making an appearance on a red carpet (including a blurred-out wardrobe malfunction that occurs as Carroll emerges from a limo), with the announcer proclaiming the couple was "manufactured by Virgin Mobile."

"It's absolutely contrived, but we wanted to be authentic in how we contrived this campaign, and that includes full transparency of their creation," Faris says of the approach. "Obviously, we'll be having fun spoofing the moments of the arc from the zeitgeist of celebrity culture." Throughout the course of the four-month campaign, the couple will be asked to participate in activities familiar to A-list endorsers, such as photo shoots, TV commercials, store openings and appearances at signature events (such as Virgin Mobile's FreeFest music festival).

Episodes of all these activities will be broadcast via the company's Facebook page, www.facebook.com/virginmobilelive. The couple, as part of their agreement with Virgin Mobile, will also chronicle their activities through a variety of social media, including Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and video blogs. Those updates, Faris says, will be coming directly from the celebrities in the making, and Virgin Mobile will be leveraging all its connections to build the couple's mystique.

"The world that they're going to be doing, we want them to be authentic," Faris says. "VM is going to be doing whatever it takes in order to get them to achieve their fame."

Even with all the connections and Virgin Mobile's help, achieving celebrity status is by no means a guarantee. But signing two unknowns and seeing if they can be built into household celebrities was a more interesting tactic than signing an established endorser with an already established Q-rating, Faris says. "Building a celebrity from scratch, that's a more interesting story than signing a celebrity because [the latter has] a built-in audience. It's not about purchasing an audience as our competitors would do, but building an audience and earning that audience," Faris says. "Even if they don't make it as celebrities, the ride that we're going to take is worth it. It's not so much the end result as the ride we're taking."