News 2003
Ten students win rent-free houses for a year
07/04/2003
A fortnight of frantic campaigning has finally paid of for ten lucky students today, when they won the keys to their dream houses, rent-free for a year for themselves and three mates in Virgin Mobile’s Big Red House competition.
More than 20,000 students entered the competition organised by Virgin Mobile, when it launched in September 2002. Twenty contestants reached the second stage after they were challenged to “demonstrate their devotion”, by sticking an image of the Big Red House in the most imaginative, daring or outrageous place possible. The eventual winners were then given a month to campaign for votes to win the main prize.
The twenty finalists got through to the last stage using a variety of weird and wonderful tactics. Amongst the strangest were Anna Donohoe from Leeds, who dressed an army of local statues in Big Red House knickers and Chris Wright from Manchester, who was thrown off the set of Coronation Street while trying to add a suspiciously red new house to the end of the street made from cardboard boxes!
The final hurdle for the remaining twenty contestants was a frantic scramble for votes to whittle them down to ten winners. All of the winners managed to persuade over 5,000 people to vote for them, led by Aline Vasquez Keller from Aberystwyth, who got 5,614 of her fellow students to help her get her hands on the keys to her dream home.
James Kydd, brand director at Virgin Mobile, said: “Big Red House was huge this year, so the winners did pretty well to beat off competition from twenty thousand other house-hungry students! Finding money for rent is one of the biggest headaches when you’re at university so winning a rent-free house for a year is a much sought after prize. Virgin Mobile prides itself on being different from other networks thanks to its simple tariff with no contract to sign, so we believe it is only right that the winners are chosen because they too stand out from the crowd!”.
To find out more about the competing candidates visit www.thebigredhouse.co.uk where full details of the competition and the students’ crazy antics can be found.
