Richard Branson is the public face of the Virgin brand ecosystem and has made his ageless, daredevil personality synonymous with the Virgin brand, even though he doesn’t personally lead many of Virgin’s businesses.
He has created a lifestyle around the brand that closely mirrors his own. It makes sense then, that Virgin Airlines launched as a “high quality, value for money” airline was the first to offer a customer experience that echoed Branson’s own “high life”—offering passengers chauffeur-driven airport transfers and in-flight entertainment before its contemporaries.
With his foray into space travel, Branson has only become more the flamboyant, risk-taking entrepreneur. While recording artists, commercial air travel, and space travel are unrelated on the surface, it is Branson’s—and, by default, the Virgin brand’s—personality that keeps things centralized.
The only risk: the sustainability of having a brand revolve around its leader’s lifestyle. Branson has centralized a disparate product portfolio within a single brand identity, but it’s critical that his system stay relevant outside of his personality and lifestyle.
While Branson is more of an external brand champion, his commitment to keeping his own lifestyle on-brand is admirable. He has succeeded in uniting products ranging from technology to transport under his system of brand centrality—what remains to be seen is how sustainable this will be over time.
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