When it comes to marketing, hiring the world's most expensive advertising agency is not as good as having a popular icon within your company. The Virgin Group is lucky to have Sir Richard Branson, its founder and chairman, as its icon. His efforts to promote his various business ventures included stunts such as being photographed in a pirate costume at the entrance to Heathrow airport; showing up nearly naked in New York's Times Square for the kickoff of Virgin Mobile USA; and repelling 407 feet off a tower building to celebrate the inaugural Virgin America flight from San Francisco, etc...

Fortunately, or not, during the luncheon event of British Chamber of Commerce on 10th September 2008 in Hilton Hotel Shinjuku, where Virgin Galactic Commercial Director Stephen Attenborough (picture, right) was introducing Virgin's commercial space travel business, no naked or half-naked man could be found and no human stunts were performed. Maybe Virgin Galactic, the newest addition to Virgin Group, did not deem any unconventional marketing stunts necessary since its history-making product speaks for itself.

DWhat Virgin Galactic has achieved puts the national space agencies from the USA, Russia and China to shame. Comparing to the conventional rocket or space shuttle, all parts of the spacecraft of Virgin Galactic is reusable; environmental damage is greatly reduce; and safety is greatly enhanced since the system can be shut down at any stage of the take off and the landing process is as automatic as a parachute. Above all that, they were able to create a short but meaningful space travel experience for its customer within the price tag of 200,000 US dollars per person per trip, and still be profitable.

With the kind permission of British Chamber of Commerce, the Kenichi Ohmae Graduate School of Business recorded this wonderful event, complete with Stephen's PowerPoint presentation, the demonstration video and the spacecraft model (as seen in the picture below). This video will become the 1st installment of a 12 part lecture series by Paul Sands (picture, left), General Manager  Japan, Virgin Atlantic for students of the Globalization programs.