RE3EL STANCE

Richard Branson is the ultimate business rebel and has gained the admiration of business rebels across the planet. After all, besides the Virgin Group, who else gets away with selling wine, wedding dresses, music, mobile service, Health Insurance and Financial Services all under one umbrella. And, more importantly, how many male CEO’s of entrepreneurial companies can get away with prancing around New York’s Times Square in a wedding dress?

A while back the former head of marketing at Coca-Cola, who moved on to teaching at UC Berkeley and Stanford stated, “A brand can’t stand for music stores, airlines, mobile phones, colas, financial services, and on and on. There’s no brand on earth that can do that. ” Since then, articles have been published and lectures have been given declaring the downfall of the Virgin group because they “just have too many businesses under one brand.”

Recently, Branson and Virgin jumped into the Peer-to-Peer lending market with Virgin Money USA. Virgin Money is simple in what it does and isn’t unique in the market. And, once again, I have no doubt that people will come out of the woodwork to warn that “it’s just one business too many and Virgin can’t possibly survive.” But, in the end, the naysayers and skeptics are missing a few valuable points about branding and entrepreneurship…points critical to remember as you build your own life and business in your own rebel way:

• A brand is a story: The reason why the Virgin brand works for all of the various companies is because each one of the company tells the same story. In every business the brand fights for the people, goes against the Goliaths, makes living and buying things fun, and keeps it simple and stylish.
• Rebels Rule: There will always be people that will march with Rebels that fight for something better. When people fly on one of the many Virgin airlines it is as much about not flying the big, impersonal airlines as it is about flying Virgin. For that people will stand in line for airline tickets, wine, or wedding dresses from the same company because when they do they know they are fighting a fight they believe in.
• Girls (and Guys and Everybody in-between) Just Want To Have Fun: Virgin products are fun and it’s almost as simple as that. At the end of the day, traditional branding is science and revolutionary branding is art and science. And, there are few things that require more art than enabling people to have fun with basic and mostly boring products.
• People Value Connection: People believe in great brands and buy them because they connect with the brand and what it stands for and means. So, when Virgin launches Virgin Money USA, Richard Branson is smart enough to tell the story of his aunt giving him a loan to help him get his own company off the ground. People can connect with that and, thus, people can connect with Virgin.

So, find a story, believe in that story, and tell that story with every new product, brand extension or idea you release to the world.