šŸ“° Virgin Money is building a digital Bank

Obviously Branson doesnā€™t agree (or more likely doesnā€™t care) - but once you sell off businesses with your name on, you run a huge risk of just tainting everything that bears your name. You canā€™t claim to be ethical, you canā€™t control having a level of consistency between all the different things that bear your name. You just become a shapeless non-entity coasting on fake brand association for people that donā€™t know any better.

I mean, my good childhood memories of spending hours in Virgin Megastore donā€™t make it any more likely that Iā€™ll fly with Virgin Airlines or sign up to a Virgin Active gym :joy:

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Bit harsh :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

I donā€™t think itā€™s harsh, I imagine itā€™s what Branson coasts on - the idea that association of a positive experience with a high-performing company, like Virgin Airlines, might encourage people to use poor performing services such as Virgin Mobile - despite the companies having nothing to do with each other.

Perhaps ā€œless discerning peopleā€ is a nicer way of putting it :wink:

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I donā€™t think people think as much in those terms of a connected brand these days. If thereā€™s any ā€˜connectionā€™ itā€™s usually in the negative.

Fifteen years ago l bought into the Virgin brand l had Active, Energy, Mobile flew Atlantic. Now l have Active and Media because itā€™s a good product offer for me in terms of location, quality and price.

Maybe fifteen years back Monzo would have set out to offer current accounts, cards, etc because thatā€™s what brands in banking did (see first direct, cahoot, et al). Nowadays thereā€™s ā€˜confidenceā€™ that a brand can excel with one product and let others contribute without tarnishing the central brand.

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Iā€™m not so sure about that, you can coast on goodwill for years.

Nokia are doing well in the last year since they finally switched to making Android devices, despite the fact that the company has changed hands twice and all their products had been a complete shit-show for the last decade.

They still have a huge amount of goodwill from their original run and they finally made some strategic product decisions that can benefit from it!

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Prehaps they are nostalgic brands. I think Nokia certainly is. I fondly think back to my 3210, completely overlooking the thing gave me headaches and that l was rubbish at snake.

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Try ā€œBranson: Behind The Maskā€ by Tom Bower if you want more than a quick Google.

Interesting point from one of Monzoā€™s co-founders on this -

Before anyone gets pedantic, we can assume that theyā€™ve done some closed testing but nowhere near as much as Monzo did, via the prepaid programme, before they spent anywhere near as much.

Actually the new Nokia phones are not made by the Nokia firm who are actually doing other things but made by another company using the Nokia brand under license

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Yes, itā€™s HMD Global, and before them it was Microsoft.

Iā€™m aware of this, and it proves my exact point - most people donā€™t know that and donā€™t care. They assume itā€™s the same company and therefore have goodwill towards it.

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Care to link to some verifiable facts? I mean, as much as Iā€™d love to go off and research your insinuation on your behalfā€¦

Not sure how I link to the contents of a book, but I promise Iā€™m the one thatā€™s done the research :wink:

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To be fair, the company that makes the phones was founded and is run by ex-Nokia employees, so it is a bit of a return to the roots of their mobile division.

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Having worked for Ericsson, Iā€™d have said for decades :wink:

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Not sure if Ericsson is better tbh. Their ā€œcarrier-gradeā€ hardware is a joke and the only reason theyā€™re still in business is because of the lack of competition. :wink:

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Yes. I believe youā€™ve been down his road before.

Clearly, Ericsson went into decline after I left them.

Their mobile phones (pre Sony) were excellent.

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You shouldā€™ve stayed for the sake of Ericcson :crazy_face:

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Unfortunately my T28 went through the wash :frowning:

My first Power Management chip was in that!

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