How Richard Branson Works Magic

Fourth Quarter, 1998

Glenn Rifkin
(Page 2 of 6)

Despite his personal riches, Mr. Branson has retained an "everyman" persona marked by his casual dress, affable and modest manner, and devilish disrespect for convention. He understands viscerally the concerns and needs of his customers and his employees and acts as a conduit for fulfilling those needs. He has built the Virgin brand in his own image, and the result is an extremely positive emotional bond between consumers and companies that bear the Virgin label. It is brand-builder's nirvana, made all the more impressive because the brand is all that ties together more than a hundred disparate Virgin businesses. There is little synergy or shared resources among the Virgin companies; Virgin, in fact, resembles the classic Japanese keiretsu such as a Yamaha or Mitsubishi.

Branding An Ethos
With Virgin, Mr. Branson has displayed remarkable staying power that is made possible only by adhering to his own carefully honed set of business values. From the winter of 1969, when as a 19-year-old wunderkind he founded his first venture - a mail- order record business, which evolved into a recording studio dubbed Virgin Records - Mr. Branson established a clear business ethos that had its genesis in the anti-establishment counterculture of the 1960's and remained steadfast even as the company grew and Mr. Branson himself evolved from the "hippie capitalist" into a widely admired billionaire.

Writing in a British management journal, Alan Mitchell noted that Mr. Branson found his winning formula in the clashing values of the 60's: profit versus people; money versus morality; the corporation versus the consumer; big (business) versus small (human); formal versus informal; planning versus spontaneity; conventionality versus novelty; hierarchy versus egalitarianism; secrecy versus openness. Mr. Branson always chose the humanistic path, and "yet uniquely, he's turned these values back on business itself, forging an unexpectedly vibrant synthesis," Mr. Mitchell wrote.

The vibrant synthesis is based on a set of five criteria that Mr. Branson has incorporated into every business he has started and every joint venture he has entered. A product or service cannot hope to bear the Virgin label unless it meets these conditions:

It must have high quality.
It must be innovative.
It must provide good value for the money.
It must be challenging to existing alternatives.
It must have a sense of fun.

With these core values as the common thread, Mr. Branson has entered one business after another in which he perceived a customer set that was being underserved by a fat and complacent dominant player. Whereas most would avoid such elephantine competition as British Airways or Britain's entire financial services industry, Mr. Branson sees a "bigger, softer underbelly" that is vulnerable to attack. He calls it the "Big Bad Wolf" theory. "We look for the big bad wolves who are dramatically overcharging and underdelivering," he explains.

When he was approached in the early 1980's with the idea of starting an airline, for example, Mr. Branson was intrigued. He had long been frustrated by the poor service and inattention to customer needs of monopolistic airlines like British Airways. Though he had become a millionaire in the music industry with Virgin Records and though his business partners were aghast at the idea that he would risk the profitable company on a business he knew nothing about, Mr. Branson saw opportunity. "Tell Richard that something is impossible and watch his eyes light up," says David Tait, head of Virgin Atlantic's North American operations.

In Virgin Atlantic, Mr. Branson designed an airline to please himself, figuring he embodied the typical air traveler. Starting with a single 747-200 in 1984, Virgin Atlantic began flying the popular London-to-New York route with two things in mind: lower prices and better service. While a passenger is stuck in a metal tube for seven hours, why not serve better meals; offer more entertainment; have smiling, enthusiastic flight crews, and create fun? Eschewing first class, Virgin Atlantic would offer a first-class experience at business-class prices.

In the past 14 years, the airline has shaken up the industry with innovative ground and on-board service and entertainment. Virgin Atlantic offers spa-like lounges in its hub airports replete with showers, putting greens, haircuts, massages and manicures. In the air, more massages, manicures and full sleeping outfits are available for its business-class passengers. It was the first airline to offer more than two choices of meals, even in economy, and it was also the first to put seat-back videos in every seat on every plane.