This summer, some time between engaging in a hunger strike for Darfur and Twittering about nude kite surfing, the unstoppable Sir Richard Branson was at it again.
In June, he blacked out his teeth, covered his arms in fake tattoos, donned a protective orange jacket — and offended the workers at Virgin Trains, one of the flamboyant billionaire’s 360 companies. The stunt was for an advertisement to promote his UK main line service, and in true Branson fashion, he sought maximum fanfare.
In July, he turned his attention to Australia and sparked outrage among Aussie cricket fans. They did not take kindly to seeing Branson’s smiling face projected onto Sydney Harbor Bridge with the message, “Good Luck Ricky. You’ll need it. Dicky,” aimed at Oz captain Ricky Ponting ahead of the Ashes series.
The latest incident was, once again, typical of the Virgin boss – borderline crazy, yet impossible to ignore.
Or as he writes in his autobiography: “As far as I am concerned, anything, however outlandish, that generates media coverage reinforces my image as a risk-taker who challenges the establishment.”
The Bransons of the World
Few business leaders have gone to such extremes as Branson to become synonymous with their brand, but there is no shortage of eccentric CEOs, who in private, or in every aspect of their business, walk the unconventional path. Larry Ellison of Oracle, for example, searches for the fountain of youth, the button-hating Steve Jobs of Apple has tried communal living, and John Mackey of Whole Foods anonymously complimented his tousled hairdo on a Yahoo message board.
Jeffrey Taylor, 48, founder of Monster.com and CEO of Eons, Inc., another one of his creations, has a propensity for getting large audiences to shout in unison things like, “We rock,” and is, in some respect, Bransonesque in his outlook on business. And that is not only because he, after being challenged by Branson, shattered the tycoon’s record when he water-skied over three miles behind a blimp.
“A lot of branding and market position has to do with striking out in the market place and trying to make an impression,” Taylor said during a recent interview at the Boston offices of Eons, an online social networking site for baby boomers. “I’m a marketer and a company builder, but at the centre I’m an idea person and part of doing that is being a good storyteller. In order to be a good storyteller, you got to act. If you don’t act, you don’t have a story.”
Taylor lives by his word. As the formerly self-proclaimed Chief Monster of the popular jobsite (he left in 2005), he irked his PR staff by using a blimp to sell the Monster brand, created the largest snowman ever built at the 2002 Winter Olympics, placed a crop circle ad outside Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, and launched the first commercial by a dotcom at the Super Bowl.
Taylor is the type of person who until recently ran a car restoration business and just the other day taught himself to use a sewing machine, “cutting fur and gluing all kinds of crap together.” He had been working on his outfit for Burning Man in September, the radical festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, where he runs Root Society. In the huge domes of the theme camp, founded by Taylor himself, he cranks up high-energy dance beats as his alter ego DJ Jefr Tale.
Famous CEOs have been known to frequent the festival, including Google’s Eric Schmidt, who Taylor ran into outside one of the domes, unrecognisable in Pippi Longstockings and a beanie hat.
“Of the ones we do know or have met, their privacy is obviously something we want to respect,” said Andie Grace, communications manager at Burning Man. “And since the city is dedicated to self-expression, it’s a good opportunity for anyone - be he a CEO or a fry cook - to reinvent himself for the week and put his outside world persona aside for a while.”
Taylor has continued his antics at Eons when, to celebrate the company’s one-year anniversary in 2006, he suggested that everyone should plunge into the Boston Harbor. Now known as ‘The Leap of Faith’, it has become a tradition. But his ideas, such as throwing Wednesday company dinners – having employees stay late that day and sending them home early on Fridays – are not mere gimmicks. They are intended to create buzz, leadership, and also build the brand.
“Our members know about it, they see the picture of all of us jumping in together,” he said, continuously tapping his foot as if ready to spring from his chair and get back to work. “It’s so simple, you can’t over-engineer it, but it has a lot of legs.”
It’s an attitude
Jim Harding, 50, a technology entrepreneur with several startups all ending in profitable acquisitions, took the meaning of eccentric to a new level when he brought one of his yaks to work last year. In a spurt of publicity, CNN showed Harding conduct a meeting perched on top the hairy bovine.
“It was just hanging in the office while we were trying to get some work done,” said Harding, now CEO of Seattle-based Cirqe, a start-up dedicated to revolutionising the use of email. “It’s unusual, but it’s what I do.”
A former technology VP at Amazon, he likes to make people feel the “wonder of possibilities” whether it may be as a result of a new software product or spotting him on a yak inside a pizza parlor. Harding brings his unconventional approach to job interviews, once challenging a cocky applicant, who claimed to be a whiz ping-pong player, to a match. The interview ended when Harding crushed him, 21-3.
“Posers don’t make good employees,” said Harding. “I don’t choose to do things differently. If you are first, you are unconventional. In other ways, it’s an attitude. People I have worked with in the past such as Gates, Allen, Bezos, and so on, are unconventional. They started outright industries of their own…Leaders find the way to move teams forward successfully and everyone looks to them to have the tenacity to carry it through to success.”
At Eons, Taylor’s mind is on taking the company beyond “saw-toothing” and a million visitors, turning it into the #1 site of choice for the 50-plus crowd. The conference room shows his brain at work: graphs, magazine cutouts, obscure key words tied together with circles and arrows cover poster boards on the walls. In one corner, plans for the new dating service, Meetcha, is outlined.
“One of the hardest things when you hit a homerun out of the park in building a brand like Monster, what do you do for an encore? Having been lucky to build a company with lots of help, I’m not done. Can I do more to impact our society?” he said. “I’ve got an interesting combination of being an idea person and being the CEO. I like the start-up phase, but I also like to stick it out and execute. And helping boomers is incredible.”
Taylor does not bury himself in business books; the idea has to be original. He scribbles with dry erase markers in the shower, fills the margins of his nonfiction books with notes, lets the mind wander during his 40-minute commute. In his opinion, it is in that dreamlike state where the best ideas are conceived. One such idea resulted in a spin-off of Eons: Tributes.com, an online resource for obituary news, tributes celebrating the lives of loved ones, and a community of support.
But he prefers to keep himself separate from his brands, unlike Branson who takes center stage at Virgin.com, riding an animated elephant next to a bizarre giraffe with red lips.
“[Branson] has taken it to a whole new level,” said Taylor. “He puts a capital ‘V’ on everything he does. I’m doing it with the Eons brand, the Tributes brand, the Jefr Tale brand, and the Root Society brand.”
Taylor still has vivid memories of riding the waves behind the blimp along the Florida coastline, dressed in a constricting wetsuit that he had accidentally put on backward. The experience captured his life philosophy of attacking challenges head on while putting the brand front and center.
Or as Branson has been quoted as saying: “You never know with these things when you’re trying something new what can happen. This is all experimental.”