Phil's blog

My colleague, Susan Johnson, is working on brand behaviours for a client. We were doing some research into brands that are brought to life by the people who deliver the service. As we were looking into Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, Susan came across this and shared it with me:

“Virgin has Brilliant Basics and Magic Moments”

Brilliant Basics. Magic Moments. That’s a powerful four-word formula for bringing a brand to life through how people behave.

Clear brand behaviour guidelines provide the framework, great processes and committed people provide the brilliant basics within the framework. Then the Magic Moments often come from the personality of your people and their freedom to express it. Freedom within a framework is the way to frame the thinking on this.

Nearly always, a ‘magic moment’ comes from anticipating a guest’s need. And surprising them. Magic needs surprise.

The Telegraph ran this letter to Richard Branson a while ago – I’m late in noticing it. I like the eventual response – Branson rang him up (he does that – he did it to me once when I worked for The Independent) and offered him the chance to select the food and wine for future Virgin flights. I also used to work for The Telegraph and haven’t read it for ages and was more than surprised at the praise it lavished on this letter. Yes, it’s funny, but why go on about how it is ‘almost universally praised’ – Their news journalism used to be good. That’s just hype. Which is why I gave up on journalism for the most part…

REF: Mumbai to Heathrow 7th December 2008

“I love the Virgin brand, I really do which is why I continue to use it despite a series of unfortunate incidents over the last few years. This latest incident takes the biscuit.

Ironically, by the end of the flight I would have gladly paid over a thousand rupees for a single biscuit following the culinary journey of hell I was subjected to at thehands of your corporation.

Look at this Richard. Just look at it: [see image 1, above].

I imagine the same questions are racing through your brilliant mind as were racing through mine on that fateful day. What is this? Why have I been given it? What have I done to deserve this? And, which one is the starter, which one is the desert?

You don’t get to a position like yours Richard with anything less than a generous sprinkling of observational power so I KNOW you will have spotted the tomato next to the two yellow shafts of sponge on the left. Yes, it’s next to the sponge shaft without the green paste. That’s got to be the clue hasn’t it. No sane person would serve a desert with a tomato would they…

more here

There’s been a tendency in recent years to downplay getting something perfectly right and apply the Pareto Principle of 80/20 instead. If you wait to get it perfectly right, we’re told, you miss the boat. Up to a point. I actually don’t like that way of thinking but can see that it’s necessary. I prefer extremists – ‘monomaniacs’ Peter Drucker used to call them – who obsess over making every detail perfect.

When it comes to a customer experience, it’s the detail that will make or break you. There are no small things. That’s what I’m uneasy about with the ‘go when it’s 80% right’ approach. Or the ‘ready, fire, aim’ approach, as Tom Peters puts it. I guess you can bring the two approaches together – Launch something at 80% then refine it while it is ‘out there’, using customer feedback in real time to adapt it to reach 100%, then keep on going to improve it.

It’s a strategy of ‘emergence’, which fits fast-changing times.

Anyway, what sparked off that thought is a blog post on the BNET network, which is itself fast-emerging as a great portal that aggregates sources from around the net then puts a layer of distillation on top in an attractive way. On this occasion by working with commentators from Harvard. No, I have no affiliation with BNET whatsoever, I just like their output.

Here’s the blog post, from Sean Silverthorne, on working with perfectionist and extremist leaders to produce a stand out innovative customer experience - James Cameron and Steve Jobs: Passionate Leadership .