One man and his brand
In this article, Peter Roberts takes a look at the relationship between the company leader and the company brand. Strong personalities at the head of their businesses build market presence through celebrity or brilliance, sometimes both, but how is this sustainable in the face of fickle markets or in the event of retirement, or worse?
Peter references three recent high profile examples to conclude that when your leader is a one-man brand, the balance between risk and reward is a fine one. In order to perpetuate the positive impact of leaders beyond their sell-by date, every business must think ahead, build succession plans and find a way to capture the personal values and drivers and embed them into the cultural fabric of the organisation.
Since Peter wrote this article earlier in 2011, we have all heard the sad news of Steve Jobs' passing. Steve was a magnificent visionary and will be sorely missed. It says something about the impact he has made, that so many millions of people around the world learned of his death on the very products he created. It remains to be seen how Apple will move forwards now.
Sir Richard Branson and Virgin
Pros.
Here is one of the world’s best-known publicity magnets, a knight and a maverick entrepreneur with outstanding flair for business. He understands like no other the ‘beat the odds’ mentality in the corporate environment and has established Virgin brilliantly on these David vs Goliath principles. Everyone loves the underdog.
Cons.
In middle age he is becoming a dangerous advocate of his own brand values to a point beyond that which most would consider acceptable risk. Not content with trying to circumnavigate the globe in a balloon or fly into space, he is now set for solo exploration of our oceans and the five deepest dives in history (he announced the Virgin Oceanic submersible project this month).
This is glorious stuff as long as the passion for risk-taking is not one that Virgin exposes its customers or other stakeholders to. Let’s hope ocean beds are the only depths this Virgin maestro will plumb, and that he’ll come up smelling of anemones.
Verdict.
The Branson brand is arguably the best known of them all. Virgin companies have provided a masterclass in brand extension and we all know what to expect in dealing with any of them. In that sense, it’s job done and were Richard the Figurehead to move on, his legacy is a world-class and sustainable business model and a watertight organisational culture that runs deeper than the Mariana Trench.
Steve Jobs and Apple
Pros.
Steve Jobs has never been any old company boss. As Apple co-founder (with Steve Wozniak) he launched the first Apple computer 35 years ago this month and is largely hailed as being responsible for the iconic status the Apple brand enjoys around the world. He was forced out in the mid-eighties, only to return as CEO and all round Saviour ten years later. Apple had been clobbered by the rise of the IBM PC and Windows and there was only one man they felt they could turn to, Jobs, the brilliant product strategist.
True to form, he has overseen the company’s renaissance with the iMac, iBook and Power Mac, the iPod, iTunes, iPhone and iPad, products driven as much by design and aesthetics, as technology. Apple’s success today is largely thanks to that return to Jobs’s original brand promise of non-conformity and the unerring instinct of the man himself.
Cons.
When Steve Jobs announced the Apple board had granted him a medical leave of absence in January this year, Apple stocks fell, as they had done before Steve recovered from serious illness in 2004 and again when he took leave on medical grounds two years ago. The news that he is once more nursing his health has upset people and markets. Sure, there are a lot of very bright folk in Apple, but there’s only one Steve Jobs.
Verdict.
However adept is the Apple board, they can only hope to emulate the insight that Jobs brings to the table. Unlike Branson, he is more than a figurehead for the organisation; he is their totem. If he leaves, as happened in 1984, Apple lose their number one innovator and product genius, a man who has always preferred to rely on his instinct rather than market research. And when gut feel has proven to be so stupendously successful, that’s irreplaceable. Everyone who loves their Mac or their iSomething must hope that Steve’s legacy will include a product roadmap into the distant future.
Sir Stelios Haji-loannou and easyJet
Pros.
Self-confessed serial entrepreneur Sir Stelios (another knight) rose to fame 16 years ago with easyJet, arguably the world’s most successful low-cost airline (but not the first – Sir Freddie Laker was doing this back in the 70s). He has since extended and licensed the easy name and brand value (‘budget’) across a plethora of products, services and sectors including travel, leisure, finance and telecoms. His brand, coupled with his preferred first name address – his surname is unpronounceable – has become synonymous with cheap, no frills services. Being synonymous is perfect brand positioning in anyone’s book.
Cons.
Like Virgin, the simple brand premise and memorable identity was a masterstroke. Unlike Virgin, the man behind the brand seems too often to be embroiled in negative publicity and as a consequence it’s hard to see easy with anything like the affection people have for Virgin. This is in some ways unfortunate, since Stelios gives a lot back through his philanthropy.
But perception is everything and it’s sometimes too easy to see the downsides. For example, there’s a whole section on easy.com dedicated to reporting the ‘brand thieves’ who are illegally cashing in on the easy name. This is a major source of ongoing conflict for Stelios; in fact, conflict surrounds him like bees around a honeypot. There have been courtroom tussles with Orange, with Ryanair, with a dating agency, even with his own company (he threatened to withdraw easyJet’s brand name unless service improved). Most recently he has led an investor’s revolt against easyJet director payouts last year and some very public criticism of the airline’s growth strategy, as a result of which he has resigned from the board in order to pursue change through shareholder pressure: he and his family are the single biggest shareholder.
Verdict.
It sometimes seems that easy ventures flourish in spite of Stelios, rather than because of him. Others might argue that they’d give their eye teeth for an activist shareholder who’s not afraid to challenge strategy and governance in the open. That said, the brand is largely successful and has enabled an unprecedented growth in consumer airline travel over the last ten years. Stelios has helped to shrink the world; and as long as customers continue to vote with their shrinking wallets, the markets should be kind enough.
Lessons
What conclusions can we draw from these examples and how relevant are they to our own organisations?
It’s clear that having a one-man brand can also be a two-edged sword, unless you’re able to either:
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capture the essence of his (or her) leadership and values, and ‘institutionalise’ them, or
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create a viable succession strategy that truly recognises the contribution gap that will yawn open when the time comes
Virgin have minimised their risk by successfully institutionalising the maverick values and embedding them deep into the culture. For customers, one of the benefits is superb service: David delivers, Goliath doesn’t. So powerful is the mantra that when the Virgin brand license was awarded to the combined cable fleets of NTL and Telewest in 2007, there was never a doubt that years of terribly poor customer service would soon come to an end. Today, VirginMedia does a pretty good job. Sir Richard was no more than a peripheral figure throughout.
But the more mega your megastar, the harder this becomes unless you take steps in good time.
When Apple ousted Steve Jobs and brought in John Sculley from Pepsi Cola, they added an important new consumer dynamic to their business, but at the expense of keeping faith with the product. It took Jobs’s return to add that innovative spark which is Apple’s hallmark. The company should now strive to avoid making the same mistake twice, and prepare their product development, people and processes for the Jobs-less generation.
On the surface, neither course of action seems viable in easyJet’s case. They have recently concluded a new brand license agreement with Stelios that will guarantee their use of the easy name without his legal interference for at least the next ten years. But their one-man brand is now their chief shareholder and antagonist which puts them in a rather odd place. It remains to be seen how this will play out and how far the airline will want to distance itself – if at all – from the Stelios factor.
A good recommendation for businesses of any size is simply this: plan ahead and don’t wait until it’s too late. If your success is historically and strategically synonymous with your leader, capture the qualities, understand how to keep them alive on a self-sustaining basis in your organisation, and promote them until they are as fundamental to the business as DNA.
