Revolutionary, irreverent and cool, Richard Branson’s Virgin has developed a brand so strong it speaks for itself. Branson recently shared some secrets to how he developed the brand in an OPEN Forum article.Here are the salient points:

1) Develop simple values- Virgin’s goal to attract customers when just a record store was to provide a cool place to hang out with low prices. Everything they did came back to the core idea of cool and low cost.

2) Stick to them- As Virgin’s empire began to grow and differentiate, sticking to the core values helped them figure out where their strong markets and products would be. They soon realized that the “fun” element referred to an excellent customer experience so markets such as consumer electronics were not as strong for them as experience oriented services.

3) Tell everyone about them- Virgin’s employees all  learn and are constantly being reminded of their brand values. Making those values central to the work environment will reinforce their strength in outbound customer interactions.

Image thanks to http://www.flickr.com/photos/45522481@N02/4352056682/