I watched the last episode of Sir Richard Branson's, The Rebel Billionaire, last night and I have to hand it to Sir Richard. It was a great show with stunts that had me wishing I was there trying them all. Branson clearly demonstrates that he's got style, vision and likes to have fun, how can you not like the guy?
So after poking around the Virgin site and becoming amazed at the size and variety of companies (57!), I realized that this is his best marketing stunt yet. To get people in the US to learn more about Virgin.
If you look around the Virgin site you can find some interesting information. Here's a couple of tasty bits.
This is from the Virgin = people page:
* 100% brand awareness in UK, 96% in Australia; 56% in USA
* No.1 brand to represent Britain in the future
* No.1 most respected brand amongst men
* 2nd most "responsible" brand (after Body Shop)
* Forbes' 4th best marketed brand in the world (after Dell, Sony, Harley Davidson)
* more trusted than the Bank of England
Notice the brand awareness numbers in the USA, 56 percent. What better way than to use a viral method of advertising to raise brand awareness? Next to blogs, TV is the other medium that can spread ideas quickly to the public. So instead of rolling a tank down Times Square to introduce Virgin Drinks to the US, he can market the whole Virgin brand, what Virgin represents and Virgin's fun and adventurous spirit the US public. Very nicely done.
Of course, it helps that Virgin's brand is pretty much just an extension of Sir Richard. Which goes hand in hand with one of my favorite posts from the gapingvoid titled “Purpose-Belief“. (Hugh, has a great site, however he does have some salty language on it, if you are easily offended.) This post states that “All the ideas can exist quite happily without their host companies“. Virgin accomplishes this by extending Sir Richards belief to his company and those beliefs are understood by Virgin's employees and his markets. Who doesn't want to have fun, be innovative, and stick two fingers up to the big boys (I suspect this is the same thing as the one finger salute here in the US).
The Virgin brand I'm guessing is actually just a statement that mirrors the company's culture. Culture is more important as having a “Company purpose statement“. Because, company culture is that reflection back from the mirror, it doesn't lie.