Dan Disbrow
Richard Branson is a self-made billionaire who owns several businesses – in fact, Branson says that he owns so many businesses that he is unable to keep track of them all. He has overseen around 500 of them, so who could blame him?
Worth over $4 billion, he has made significant contributions to entrepreneurship and business over the course of his life. However, like any business person who takes risks, his career has had its share of miscalculations and wrong turns. One of his less than successful businesses is the Virgin Cola, which originally took Britain by storm.
Virgin Cola Launch
Virgin Cola was launched in 1994, and it was pretty good at successfully competing with Coca-Cola and Pepsi in the UK. Later on, they thought they could expand their business to the U.S., and they launched it in New York in a very memorable way!
During the grand opening, Branson and his team drove a Sherman tank through a wall of Coca-Cola cans. This created some front-page headlines, both for the flair of it all and because they were trying to compete with one of the best-known brands in the world. Their glory, however, was short-lived.
Coca-Cola’s Counterattack
What happened next is the source of a lot of controversy, because a lot of retailers quickly stopped carrying Virgin Cola even though it seemed to be off to a good start. Why would retailers stop carrying a drink that was selling well?
While we can’t say for sure what happened, Richard Branson has some ideas. He has said that Coca-Cola “gave them offers they couldn’t refuse… and it was a very systematic kneecapping job.” Eventually, retailers pulled their orders of Virgin Cola, the company went out of business, and even Richard Branson himself admitted that Virgin Cola was far from his most brilliant business venture.
Takeaways From Richard Branson’s Virgin Cola Business
Although Richard Branson believes that Coca-Cola was sabotaging his business, a theory that was later confirmed by his bank manager who had previously worked for Coca-Cola, he considers Virgin Cola a learning experience. When asked about the company and its eventual failure, he said, “The main problem was that we didn’t have anything completely unique.”
His brand was great, but so was Coca-Cola’s. Their drink tasted great, but so did Coca-Cola. Therefore, they didn’t have a real edge over the competition.
If you’re a minnow, and you’re planning to take on a Goliath, you have to offer something different. In addition to creative, exciting, and original marketing, it’s important to know what your strengths are and what makes you stand out from the crowd… and it probably can’t just be the fact that you managed to drive a tank down the street.
What makes your company unique?
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