The Virgin Brand

Virgin is a brand whose customer franchise is so strong that it can be applied to a vast range of businesses.

The Virgin brand has been applied to radio stations, record companies, retailers, airlines (such as Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Blue), mobile phone companies, broadband ISPs (Virgin Media), train services, motor vehicle sales, credit cards, loans, life insurance, car and pet insurance, home insurance, mortgages, pensions, savings and investments, music festivals, recreational experiences (such as using a sheep dog to herd a flock of sheep, and now space travel), network marketing businesses (e.g. Virgin Cosmetics), and much more.

The Virgin brand revolves around delivering value pricing, high quality, fun, great customer service, and innovation, and being authentic, people-oriented, hip, and associated with Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson and his personal reputation.

Virgin Group Brand Values

• Fun = enjoyment and humour, not offensive and incompetent
• Value for Money = Simple, not cheap
• Quality = Attention to detail, not expensive for the sake of it
• Innovation = challenging convention, not different for the sake of being different
• Competitive Challenge = responding to consumer needs, not being irrelevant
• Brilliant Customer Service = empowered, not unprofessional people

Commercialisation of the Virgin Brand

Richard Branson's Virgin Group is almost a pure branding operation. It licenses the Virgin brand name to many of the businesses in the Virgin family, choosing to remain at something of a distance to the actual operating companies. In many instances (such as Virgin Mobile in Australia, which is owned by Singtel Optus) the arrangement is little more than a brand licence agreement.

Virgin Management Limited (VML) is the small shareholder function that manages Richard Branson's interests in all of the Virgin Group companies. Virgin Management Limited also acts as a service company, providing certain advisory and managerial services regarding Virgin's interests in various Virgin group companies to the companies themselves, (their immediate parent company) and ultimately to Virgin Group Investments Limited (VGIL), which - unsurprisingly perhaps - is registered in the tax haven of the Virgin Islands. VML has offices in London, New York, and Sydney.

Due to the diverse and independent nature of the business around the group, the team at VML practice a collaborative and supportive style of custodianship. While Virgin Management Limited is Richard Branson's company through which his Virgin activities are managed, it is kept almost invisible to the public. While the Virgin brand is quite widely licensed and its public face remains the Virgin Group (which is involved in about 200 Virgin businesses around the world and acts as a venture capital company).

Not everything Virgin does well. In September 2007 the updated form of Richard Branson's original mail-order music album business (which started in 1970) - Virgin Megastores in the UK - underwent a management buy-out and was renamed "Zavvi". Zavvi did not do well outside the Virgin Group, and just over a year later, in December 2008, Zavvi became a victim of the global economic crisis and went into receivership.