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By Glenn Rifkin

Richard Branson, the 48-year- old chairman of the London-based Virgin Group, has parlayed a lifelong disdain for conventional business wisdom into a $3.5 billion international conglomerate and one of the world's most powerful and recognizable brands. Under the ubiquitous Virgin banner, Mr. Branson has ventured into a panoply of businesses - from condoms to wedding gowns, from airlines to financial services - and in the process has taken on entrenched giants and wrested market share from them.

All the while, the flamboyant and irreverent Mr. Branson has tweaked the business establishment, particularly in Britain, and displayed a P.T. Barnum-like command of publicity and showmanship to gain priceless cachet for the Virgin brand. He has been, for much of the past 30 years, one of the most admired Britons, and his fame has spread in recent years around the globe as Virgin has expanded its reach and its luster. 

Mr. Branson loves nothing more than a daunting challenge; he views the impossible as just another business opportunity. Who else but Mr. Branson would put the vibrant Virgin label on the decaying British Rail with hopes of turning the dilapidated railroad into a sleek, profitable business? And throughout his career, he has cleverly embraced the David role, taking on Goliaths like British Airways, EMI Music and Coca-Cola, with the intent of becoming the best rather than the biggest and working under the assumption that there are significant profits to be made in small pieces of big markets. 

His trademark is outlandish publicity stunts. He will do almost anything to promote the Virgin brand: driving a tank down Fifth Avenue in New York to introduce Virgin Cola to the United States, risking his life in high-profile hot-air balloon adventures or portraying a drowning victim on television's "Baywatch."

Indeed, so crucial is the continued high profile of Virgin that Mr. Branson says his highest paid and most important employee is Will Whitehorn, his public relations and communications director. "I suspect in most companies, the public relations person is down at No. 20 in the pecking order," Mr. Branson says. "But, here, he is fighting incredibly important battles. If a negative story starts running away with itself in the press and is not dealt with fast, it can badly damage the brand. And so we put enormous weight on our public relations people."

Mr. Branson reportedly sets aside at least 25 percent of his time for public relations activities, and Mr. Whitehorn has a staff member whose sole responsibility is devising the headline-catching publicity stunts for which Mr. Branson has become known. "If your staff works enormously hard to create something they are proud of, it's foolish if you don't let the world know about it," Mr. Branson states. "Using yourself to get out and talk about it is a lot cheaper and more effective than a lot of advertising. In fact, if you do it correctly, it can beat advertising hands down and save tens of millions of dollars."

But Mr. Branson stands for more than balloon trips and powerboat races across the Atlantic. Behind the brash and insouciant huckster, there lies a sharp business visionary who has created a formula for success that is rife with lessons for chief executives in any country and any business. The Branson magic is not about smoke and mirrors, but rather is a kind of chicken soup for the moribund, tradition-bound corporate soul. Mr. Branson's success reflects an uncanny ability to take the consumer's point of view as his own and Þnd ways to embrace that view for profit.