Virgin – Brand Reputation

Virgin Group is a family owned growth capital investor, with a globally recognised and respected brand.

The investment team focuses on their core customer sectors of

Travel & Leisure
Telecoms & Media
Music & Entertainment
Financial Services
Health & Wellness

Virgin Group aims to deliver long term capital appreciation through investment in these 5 sectors. Virgin Group actively seeks need investment opportunities and to partner with like-minded investors.

These are the three ways in which the Virgin Group provides value to their investments:

Sector expertise and track record across their 5 core sectors
Experience and understanding of consumer behaviour, brands and marketing
Strong network of investors, management teams and alumni

Virgin Group is also an active technology-focused venture investor with a portfolio of over 35 companies spanning the consumer internet, fintech and sharing economy sectors.

The Virgin Group has identified all the brands within the organisation and have segmented it, into the 5 core sectors allowing them to be more focused on what the brand values and what it is they want to accomplish through their brand portfolio. They have the same graphics throughout their portfolio, with the Virgin Logo, making this easily recognised by their consumers. They have also clearly identified their brand scope as highlighted in the section above. This shows me that Virgin Group clearly understands the importance of a brand portfolio, and understands how to maintain the brand portfolio as well as bring it to life in their every day business objectives and they are effective at managing their brand portfolio.

Virgin Group Brands

In an age where consumers expect brands to be transparent in the ways they run their businesses and consumers are so involved in making or breaking a brands reputation, The Virgin Group and more specifically Sir Richard Branson understands this. While doing my research for this blog post, I came across this on their website, www.virgin.com when trying to find out what the brand stands for:

“Over five decades, the Virgin name and logo has become renowned for providing a unique and exceptional customer experience. Whether in banking, travel, entertainment, health and fitness or communications the Virgin Brand has become one of the most desirable brands in the world. The Brand’s backbone is its values; providing heartfelt service, being delightfully surprising, red hot, and straight up while maintaining an insatiable curiosity and creating smart disruption.”
Virgin Group

That statement alone speaks wonders about the brand and what it is they stand for and want to achieve, providing heartfelt service is one of the values that brand aims to achieve, they do this throughout all their efforts in each of the different brands.

An example of brands transparency and handling a crisis situation was shown with the Virgin Galactic test flight disaster in 2014. Sir Richard Branson was quick to post a tweet to the public and then go to the site of the crash and speak to the media as well as the public and vowing to find out what went wrong to ensure that a repeat of the incident never happens again. With such a huge tragedy, Sir Richard Branson and the Virgin Brand showed accountability, transparency and strong leadership.

The Virgin Group understands the value of their customers, however, more importantly they understand the value of their staff. As we have all discovered, a happy and positive employee will create a happy and positive customer experience. In a brand that is built and truly believes in providing heartfelt service, they take the extra steps to ensure their employees are happy as well. The customer plays a huge role in the reputation of any brand and nurturing that relationship is vital to the success of the business flourishing.

In Conclusion, Sir Richard Branson has definitely spent a lot of time to understand his target market and to make sure he engages with his customers on every way possible, he is very active on his own personal level on Social Media as well as public engagements with his consumers. This definitely has given the public a sense of trust with Sir Richard Branson, they feel as if he is transparent in his communications. The brand has a very large detailed portfolio and is definitely sustainable as long as the focus remains on their 5 core customer sectors and continue to provide value. I believe the brand should continue to ensure the values of the brand are firmly embedded within the corporate structure and is supported on every level to ensure they continue to deliver on their brand promise and that the brand promise continues and lives beyond its founder.

Biography:

https://www.virgin.com/virgingroup/content/about-us#page

https://www.virgin.com/virgingroup/content/our-brand-0

Sunburst Electric brand contact planning and management

Sunburst Electric is an electrical contracting franchise that originates from the United States of America where it is known as Mr.Electric and was first introduced to South Africa in 2015. Sunburst Electric and their Service Professionals (electricians) are dedicated to providing world class customer service through their systems and processes and strive on getting the job done right the first time.

When you first come into contact with Sunburst Electric on their website, you are offered multiple ways in which you can request a service, you can leave an inquiry online, call the national call center or send through a WhatsApp, this suits almost everybody’s needs that is looking for an electrician.

When you get through to the call centre, you are greeted with “It’s a great day at Sunburst Electric, this is “x” speaking, how may we help you”, it doesn’t matter who answers the phone, it is always done the same way, providing consistency to customers and ensuring all customers receive the same service.

Once a Service Professional (electrician) is booked for the job, there are a series of steps that happen to enlighten the customer, keep them engaged with the brand, and to help them trust the brand. A confirmation email is sent of the booking, customer WhatsApp groups are created, the customer receives a reminder notification of the job they have scheduled. This already allows the customer to build a relationship with the brand before they have ever had human contact, based on the experiences before the Service Professional has arrived they can already determine the level of service they will receive from the brand going forward.

Sunburst Electric aims to create an effortless sales process with their electricians and their customers. Service Professionals all are equipped with ipads that allow them to quote and easily display quotes to customers to give them upfront, on time pricing, once again, allowing the customer to engage with the brand right there and then and make a decision on the spot if they would like to go ahead with the work. Training is given to all Service Professionals as well as call center agents once a week, where they do role play and go through their different steps of the CUSTOMER process and how to engage with customers. For Sunburst Electric it is more than just fixing an electrical problem, but also about building a relationship with their customers.

To keep their customers loyal to a certain extent, they also provide memberships to Sunburst Electric that allows the customer to receive VIP treatment.

Below we will look at some of the brand contact points of Sunburst Electric:

- “Have all product points of contact been identified?” In the Case of Sunburst Electric, this would be from the website to the time the van pulls into the driveway, a bright yellow van full of branding and the way the prices are given to customers in a visually interactive way on ipads in the customer’s home. The customer receives an email and WhatsApp communication when the Service Professional in en route to the customers home, they receive a picture of the Service Professional, his license number and a short biography of who will be entering their home.

- “Have all service points of contact been identified?” For Sunburst Electric this would be the well groomed and branded Service Professionals that come to the customer’s homes, with neatly branded uniforms, branded business cards in a branded vehicle.

- “Have all planned points of contact been identified?” Sunburst Electric aims to provide world-class expert electrical service to every customer they serve, this is proven through their Social Media campaigns as well as partnerships with other service providers in the contracting industry that strive to provide world class customer service.

- “Have all unplanned points of contact been identified?” Sunburst Electric has a very positive word of mouth, at the end of jobs, Service Professionals are encouraged to ask their customers for a referral. The customer is also encouraged to leave a rating on either Facebook or Google My Business. Word of mouth is the second highest source of turnover for Sunburst Electric.

Sunburst Electric company values are to live R.I.C.H, This stands for Respect, Integrity, Customer Focus and Having Fun in the process, this is demonstrated through the training that is done at a Head Office level through all staff involved in Sunburst Electric and is shown to the customer by respecting the customer, having integrity with their dealings, focusing on the customer and ensuring they have fun in the process, creating a happier work environment.

Sunburst Electric appears to be very involved from an internal to an external extent on training all staff on the purpose of customer relationship building and following the processes and systems within the brand. Sunburst Electric is a franchise and has multiple forms on monitoring each franchisee to make sure that everyone is following the brand promise and code of values. There is a company Intranet site in place, where positive posts are done and video training as well as training hosted at their Head Offices once every quarter. I think they have done very well at identifying a gap in the market and making sure that all the teams strive for the same goal, they do this through constant engagement and training.

Visual and Verbal Language of Nando’s

The Visual and Verbal Language of Nando’s

The visual language of the Nando’s brand is easily recognisable from their logo to the iconic bird in their logo being the Barcelos cockerel as well as the iconic Nando’s periometer.

Nando’s has a very strong story behind them, they have this story on all their menus to share with their customers and let them feel apart of the Nando’s journey, and to give the idea that Nando’s is a lot more than just a restaurant, but to give you the feeling of Family and that you as the consumer are apart of their family as well, throughout a Nando’s restaurant, they use their iconic red colour as well as their famous Nando’s bird being the Barcelos cockerel. This Bird is an icon and plays a huge effect on the visual identity of the brand, any person who knows of Nando’s would easily be able to identify the bird and name it the Nando’s bird.

he Nando’s periometer is also a large factor of the Nando’s brand, they have used strong rich African colours to represent the different strengths of peri-peri for their chicken and it a great and unique way for customers to be able to identify the different strengths of heat/flavour when deciding what meal to go for.

One thing that really stood out to me when doing research for this blog post was the new angel that Nando’s has been using in terms of the angel when writing, on all the stories of Nando’s, you would know that Nando’s started in 1987, Nando’s has decided in order to celebrate this, to have all their headings at an 87 degree across all their designs. I think that this is something great and bold to do, it’s different so will make the customer wonder why it is being done and with the consumer knowing that there is always more up the sleeve of the marketing department as Nando’s it will make them curious and to re-learn the rich story of Nando’s.

The brand has created their own font to use for their Logo and other marketing efforts, the font allows the consumer to have the perception of a certain way that the brand speaks in terms of dialect, that relates back to the voice and tone used when Nando’s does any marketing whether it be TV ads, Radio ads, or any print advertising, when consumers read the ad’s they associate it with a cheeky tone. In terms of the way Nando’s markets itself, it is an extremely cheeky approach to marketing, they are always the first to come up with some sort of great campaign around any world event or situation that sparks headlines. They have a way of making some serious situations seem a lot more light hearted and to bring a smile to almost every face that sees their ads. An example of this would be the Load Shedding that we are dealing with in South Africa, Nando’s came out with an Ad in 2015 that made light hearted fun of the Load Shedding in South Africa as well as promoting people to come and eat at Nando’s when the power is out and the advertised a special that they were currently having at that point in time. Here is a link to the ad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3x18auzFFg. This is something that definitely resonated with a lot of South Africans, with the gentleman in the video also saying “Hello darkness my old friend” quoting the iconic song ‘Sound of Silence’ from Simon & Garfunkel, this is a very popular song that many people are familiar with, this became the talk of the town for awhile with people quoting “Hello darkness my old friend” every time there was Load Shedding, immediately making the consumer think of Nando’s as well.

In conclusion, Nando’s has a very unique way of advertising themselves and have taken one step further with breaking the rules in branding themselves and making sure that they stand out from their competition.

Sources:

https://www.nandos.com/story/

https://www.creativebloq.com/branding/nandos-reveals-cheeky-new-visual-identity-11618922

https://www.behance.net/gallery/34184719/New-Nandos-Global-Visual-Identity-System

https://www.nandos.co.za/explore/brand-story