DESIGN
Virgin at 50: the official anniversary volume, celebrating half a century of one of the world’s most famous brands Virgin was founded in 1970 by Richard Branson and Nik Powell. Today, the Virgin group consists of more than sixty companies operating in thirty-five countries with nearly 70,000 employees. Virgin’s total social media audience is over 35 million users. Previously the editor of Computer Arts magazine, Nick Carson is an experienced copywriter, design journalist and consultant. Formerly editor of Computer Arts, he launched and chairs the Brand Impact Awards to reward the world’s best branding.
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c. 315 illustrations 24.5 x 21.0cm 376pp (inc 4 x 6pp gatefolds and 10 x 4pp inserts) ISBN 978 0 500 022931 March £39.95
01 CHEEKY START-UP
Succeeding against the odds
44
Virgin Blue: How one of Virgin’s scrappiest upstarts gained traction against stiff competition.
When Richard suggested launching a budget domestic airline in Australia, he was met with little enthusiasm within Virgin Group. His instinct to push ahead was proved right, however: Virgin Blue became the fastest-growing Virgin company of all time. Fittingly for such a no-frills brand, the idea was pitched to Richard over drinks, with ideas sketched on to beer mats. “No business case, no thesis, just big-ticket thoughts,” recalls Virgin Blue co-founder Brett Godfrey. “From those beer coasters we agreed five points on one page that I had to secure for the investment to occur.” A huge boost came when Ansett Australia – the main competitor to the dominant airline, Qantas, with a third of the market – went bust shortly after 9/11. “We bet the shop by buying every single aircraft we could get our hands on,” Brett reveals. “The market crashed, and we saw a oncein-a-generation opportunity to pick up a new fleet for prices I’d never seen before, and never since.”
OPPOSITE, TOP No-frills airline Virgin Blue played on the Australian slang for a redhead: a ‘bluey’.
OPPOSITE, BOTTOM Virgin Blue co-founder Brett Godfrey (centre) with some of the airline’s fun-loving crew.
To save money, Virgin Blue launched as the world’s first online-only airline. It relied on media coverage rather than advertising and attracted attention however it could. “We emblazoned our phone number and website across the hull of the aircraft,”
Brett explains. After its initial press conference, the cheeky start-up became the lead story on every major Australian news network and took over the front pages the next day too. The name ‘Blue’, at first glance a strange choice for a famously ‘red’ brand, is an in-joke: in Aussie slang, ‘bluey’ means a redhead. Crew were encouraged to have fun, and antics ranged from hiding in overhead lockers to organising races between passengers, passing toilet paper over their heads down the seat rows without breaking it. Instead of having ‘baggage handlers’ hidden behind the scenes, Virgin Blue proudly named them its ‘pit crew’ and gave them bright red uniforms. “Australia had been a graveyard for startup airlines, but the Virgin brand and our cheeky attitude was our ‘shield’ – coupled with a value-based model that resonated with irreverent Australians,” adds Brett. “We didn’t try to compete with the big guys: we created a new market. Within three years we were one of Australia’s most trusted and respected brands.”
Virgin by Design Virgin and Nick Carson Virgin by Design is the official, anniversary volume celebrating 50 years of daring innovation and creativity at Virgin, presenting the stories, the people and the work that went into the building and shaping of a much-loved and globally respected brand. More than a retrospective, it gets to the heart of the values that make the Virgin brand so unique, communicating how those values resonate with people today – and will continue to do so in the future. Based on in-depth research and interviews with all the key people who have played a part in Virgin’s companies past and present, Virgin by Design is organized into ten chapters – each with fully illustrated case studies – that provide a sense of how hard work and brilliant ideas have resonated with audiences worldwide. Spanning the full 50-year chronology from Virgin’s beginnings as a record store to its bold future in space tourism with Virgin Galactic, the book also embraces Virgin’s broad diversity in terms of its global presence as a brand, its mission and purpose to change business for good, and its offerings across multiple sectors, including travel, banking, health and fitness, communications, and entertainment. Virgin by Design is packed with the wit, verve, spirit of adventure and ‘how it was done’ insights that will make it a must-have publication.