Virgin – How Far Can You Stretch a Brand?

Virgin, a tale to tell

The Virgin brand cannot be dissociated of its “founder’s brand”. Sir Richard Branson is the face of Virgin and can be considered the brand’s icon, so to look into the history of Virgin demands to look into this serial entrepreneur history. The man behind the brand

Richard Branson was born in Blackheath (South London), son of Eve Branson and Edward James Branson, belonging to a family with a long tradition in Law. However, due to dyslexia, Richard achieved a poor academic performance as a student, yet at the age of 15 he founded his first venture, Student, a journal to serve as an outlet for British university students to publish ideas. This venture came to an end after several attempts to sell it. After this first business attempt, Branson (together with two other friends) created the first building stone of Virgin: Virgin Music. The first store opened above a shoe shop on Oxford Street and it captured the essence of what would lie at the core of the brand promise: the customer’s experience. As Branson described: “We wanted the Virgin record shop to be a place where people could meet and listen to records together… We wanted them to stay longer, chat to the staff, and really get into the records they were going to buy… and we wanted to be cheaper…with the profits forfeited to be more than made up for by people buying more records”.

Branson’s entrepreneur spirit was replicated in his private life, that affected indirectly (sometimes quite directly) the performance of the business. His ideology of living life to the full on land, sea and sky, made him embark in several attempts to break world records regarding travelling long distances. Though accounting more failures than successes, all these attempts served the purpose of showing what was Branson’s personal spirit and at the same time show that that same spirit was imbued in the Virgin brand. The duality Branson/Virgin, made him the company’s main advertising and PR vehicle, as well as...