Why advertise for somebody else?
- By Richard Branson -
- Jan 30, 2012
Was asked on Twitter by @ErledigtAgentur why would we advertise for somebody else? It's very rare that I use myself to advertise a non-Virgin company. In fact, it's quite rare to use myself to advertise a Virgin company.
However, when we started Virgin Atlantic and only had one second hand 747, Amex asked if I would do an advert for them. I agreed on the condition that i had my 747 at a petrol station and used the Amex card to pay the 67,000 dollars it cost to fill up the plane.
It really helped to get Virgin established at no cost to ourselves, and made people smile.
Since then I have agreed to do the occasional ad for companies I respect, like Nike, if they are humorous and I can raise a lot of money for charity. Both of those criteria were met with the current #KobeSystem ads.
There’s a blooper video of the Amex ad we’re searching for in the archives now. Will post when we find it.
By Richard Branson. Founder of Virgin Group
