Put your Brand on the Map

It was a busy day on the famous Times Square in New York. The spectators gathered had their eyes wide open and mouths agape on Sir Richard Branson and the cast of Broadway’s The Full Monty dangling, virtually naked on some 100 ft above the Square from a crane. In fact, they were not naked but were clothed in nude bodysuits with their creative parts covered by a Virgin cell-phone. The outrageous Bransonian stunt was performed to mark the launch of Virgin Mobile in the USA. As usual, Sir Richard was the cynosure, the very conspicuous public face of the brand. The bold stunt made a fantastic talking point in the media and put the brand Virgin Mobile right on the map. Certainly, it was a madcap exploit, but it was thematically perfectly consistent with Virgin Mobile’s motto ‘Nothing to hide’ meaning that they had no hidden service costs.

With the competition growing stiffer and stiffer, it’s more necessary today than ever for entrepreneurs to be bold and innovative in presenting their brands to the customers. This is why Sir Richard Branson tells in his international best-seller ‘Screw It, Let’s Do It: Lessons in Life and Business’ to the emerging entrepreneurs “Whatever your field, you must be passionate about it and create excitement in everything you do. Beat your drum and look beyond the obvious.”

When they launched Virgin Atlantic in 1984, the start-up venture had to vie with its affluent counterparts such as Pan Am, TWA, and British Airways with little to spend on advertising. There, Sir Richard takes advice from Sir Freddie Laker, Founder of Laker Airways who tells him ‘Richard, I know you’re not actually that good at public speaking, but you’ve got to get out there and use yourself to try to put Virgin on the map. Try to make sure you get on the front pages, not the back pages.’ And he’s been following that advice to the letter in building his enormously successful and famous business empire-Virgin Group.

To get the brand ‘Virgin’ on the front pages, Sir Richard has done all sorts of crazy things ever since. He’d plaster the name ‘Virgin’ on all the stratospheric balloons he adventured in on numerous occasions over the years not to mention being rescued out of the sea by the helicopters! He was dressed in a frilly wedding gown to promote the shops-Virgin Bride. He appeared in a plaid miniskirt and long blond wig as Axl Rose, the lead vocalist in Guns N’ Roses at the inauguration of a new Virgin Megastore in Los Angeles. He walked the plank between two balloons and bungee jumped 300 feet above the Victoria Falls and did dozens more madcap exploits which popularized him, and by extension, the Virgin brand.

Granted, Sir Richard is an outlier in terms of his risk appetite, business acumen and wealth. Very few business leaders are as bold as him and even fewer can afford to do half of the things he does for the sake of the Virgin brand. Says Alicia de Mesa, a marketing consultant and author of the book ‘Before the Brand’, ‘You’re not supposed to “stretch” a brand so much, but Richard Branson is a billionaire because he hasn’t accepted limitations.’

The Wall Street Journal went on to confer on Virgin Mobile USA the award for the worst ad of the week for the Full Monty stunt over the Times Square. Dan Schulman, the founding CEO of Virgin Mobile USA blithely collected the award, telling the marketing team, ‘The last publication I want endorsing our ads is the Wall Street Journal. Your goal for the fourth quarter is to win that award again.’ The award, awkward or downright degrading in the eyes of an orthodox CEO, simply sparked off a good deal of media buzz for the brand.

In this age of disruptive innovation, we have to break the rules we hold to be hallowed and defy the conventional marketing wisdom. In advertising, businesses have to stretch the normal parameters or risk being perceived as ‘dull and boring’. Be it an online ad, a TV commercial, a print newspaper/magazine ad, a billboard or hoarding or the likes, the originality, out-of-the box thinking, sense of humour and meaning should be there to put our brands on the map.

The Virgin Galactic logo designed by the iconic designer Philippe Starck is a noteworthy example of a modern brand. The nebulous iris depicts the infinite possibilities of human endeavour and marks our opportunity to look back at Earth from space with our own eyes for the first time.

Sir Richard vehemently denounces the commercials from most companies where celebrities exaggerate the quality of a product or service. Such shallow celebrity endorsements with the sole aim of fooling the people do little to promote the brands today. At Virgin, writes Sir Richard “….the schema almost comes through the celebrities not taking themselves too seriously….” The famous 2005-2006 Kate Moss campaign for Virgin Mobile UK exemplified this shrewd strategy.

In Sri Lanka, we too should re-think our advertising approach and start crafting better strategies to put our brands on the map.