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Virgin Radio tunes out

Posted in Media, Marketing, Branwell Johnson, Latest reporters' blogs June 2nd, 2008 by Branwell Johnson

What’s in a name? Quite a lot when it’s the Virgin brand. SMG has just sold Virgin Radio to Times of India but the name is not going with the station.

The value of the Virgin name can be seen by reports that it could have cost Times of India up to another £8 million to license the brand. The company has chosen to follow another path and invest £15 million in developing the station and devising a new name to market – at least that means some advertising business for an agency.

Times of India is taking a route already trodden as the management buy out of Virgin Megastore saw the high street entertainment retailer become Zavvi. It’s still early days for Zavvi but it seems to be making its presence felt.

On the other hand NTL so valued the Virgin name that it brought Virgin Mobile and ditched the NTL branding with all its negative associations to become Virgin Media. Picking up the Virgin name was done in a separate licensing deal to the actual £962 million acquisition of Virgin Mobile.

So farewell to all the hard work put in by Jono Coleman, Russ Williams and the rest over the years in building the brand. Any suggestions for what to call the station? May as well get your ideas in before some highly paid consultants get to work and produce a name.

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