Virgin America presentation at ATME

I recently attended the 2008 Association of Travel Marketing (Red Rock Hotel, Las Vegas) and I had the pleasure of sitting in on a presentation given by Porter Gale, the VP of Marketing for Virgin America. Ms. Gale gave an excellent presentation on how Virgin America is redefining air travel.

As everyone is probably aware the Virgin Group is probably one of the most intriguing and successful brands, and of course a good part (if not all) of the credit goes to the leadership of Sir Richard Branson.

I listened intently to try and learn as much as I could about the Virgin Group's marketing strategy, especially as it relates to launching a new business. While it seems that they have the magic formula, in business as in life you can never anticipate all of the challenges that lie before you. It was during the question and answer period that the most basic of questions had me thinking about their short-term chance at success.

The question from the audience was simply " are you profitable?". The answer was "no, but we are at plan". As everyone knows it is not uncommon, in fact it is almost expected that a start-up will be in the red (again, usually by design) for some period of time. I just had to wonder if they contemplated the sudden and dramatic increase in oil prices when the airline was first conceptualized. The Virgin Group certainly must have deep pockets, but I also wonder what their tolerance for pain is.

This is the part of marketing (and business for that matter) that I do not like. You can never plan for all contingencies as there are too many variables. I certainly hope that they survive as the airline industry is in desperate need of fresh ideas to improve air travel. We shall see...