Marketing and Branding with Virgin Atlantic

Tonight I had the pleasure of going to Lincoln University and watching a speech from Paul Dickinson from Virgin Atlantic who is director of sales and marketing. Very inspiring speech covering some very important messages. Some echoing my presentation the previous day to a boot camp on corporate identity and branding. My topic was measuring your online and off-line branding.

Paul echoed this message saying measuring effectiveness is key to business and marketing has to be measured. Their branding and marketing starts with employing people, through a six stage process of training that is standard across the business before they go into their respective departments. Their philosophy is treat people well, have flexible working, great benefits, for example family health cover.

They may not pay the highest wages in the industry however they value their employees which is a key message to any business. Something all companies go through is stages when budgets are tight. It is easy to push staff too hard without recognising the benefits back to them of working for your company.

Virgin Atlantic's approach to marketing is to do the opposite of everyone else using photography to amplify their message. Their targets act specifically where their audience or customers are and where their markets are. They also portray a product story, where others cannot do it. They also have a top tier of highly influential big spending clients who they personally treat very well and have direct links to the sales and marketing director.

After the short presentation we had drinks and some nibbles with students of the university. I was inspired by their enthusiasm. A group who I spoke to were doing marketing in media and PR which is something I enjoy very much. The students were very open to advice and very keen to hear how they could get into businesses and work alongside them to add some experience to their CV when they look for a job at the end of their course. My recommendation was to ring companies up and offer to help the business in exchange for sharing knowledge and information. Most businesses are very good at producing whatever widgets or service they do best, they know it inside out. What a lot of businesses are not great at is their own marketing as they are too close to their product or service. This puts the students at the University in a great advantage of being independant from the business being able to give an objective view on it.

I would advise any student at the University to offer a specific project that they have identified for the business. This goes a long way, as opposed to the many enquiries businesses received from students offering to do placements without any real substance behind it. Most business owners struggle with the day-to-day operations of the business and know that taking a student on or apprentice is a drain on resources. Be proactive and offer to do a specific solution or project for that business.

I was particularly impressed by one of the students, Tom who was straight in there asking me questions related to his studies. What kind of businesses we worked in, who they could talk to to look for a job placement. This type of enthusiasm is very well sought-after in the business world. Our time is precious to us and we want people to take initiative like this to go that one step further. The group of students that gathered around me were very pleasant and asked some very intelligent questions. They asked for my business card so they could get in touch which is a great showing of initiative and willingness out there, which is not always the case within universities from my experience.

I'll encourage any marketing student to get in touch with Develop and Promote if they're interested in marketing or PR. Not only do we market ourselves differently from other companies but we also carry out marketing activities for every single one of our customers. There is a wealth of opportunities for students to have an insight into the real business world with our business. If any students want that experience and can offer an intuitive insight into promoting business. I would welcome at tweets from them, a discussion on LinkedIn, an e-mail or a phone call.

Lincoln University are developing some great young people that are the future of our economy. If Develop and Promote are not able to offer an opportunity we know many business people that would be able to offer some guidance and assistance and possibly a small project to work on. I look forward to spending more time with the students at the university and help them grow into the careers that they would like to get into.

I must admit though from a personal point of view, I'm a little embarrassed, when I got home from the evening event my wife said to me you stink of onions. I had a business lunch which had too many onions. I hope it did not put them off!