Not many young accountants find themselves heading up marketing for a Virgin brand, but George Wareing is doing just that.
As head of marketing and strategy at the newly-created Virgin Media Business – formerly NTL Telewest Business – he is leading a team of 25 people, in a role which encompasses all marketing disciplines and channels.
And all this despite the fact that Wareing actually trained as a mathematician and an accountant. He obtained a Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) qualification not long after he started his first job, as a temp at what was Cable London. The company was bought by Telewest where he ran a team of accountants for about 18 months, focusing on pricing and commercial finance.
The experience was no doubt a very useful grounding in business, yet Wareing admits he “had ideas” about marketing and “liked to blend accountancy with creativity.” He got himself involved in a few marketing-related projects and says he felt he had “an eye” for the types of creative which worked. Eventually he proved himself sufficiently competent to make the switch from one field to another.
Now, 10 years in business telecoms have paid off for the maths graduate with creative leanings. He’s understandably delighted that he is able to wear the Virgin ‘hat’ – this will surely come as a relief after working under the NTL Telewest brand for three years, with its connotations of shabby customer service – even if these problems did mainly centre around the consumer division, as Wareing will attest. The new Virgin brand, and the overall ethos, he says, “feels like a licence for unlimited creativity.”
“We’re able to think in a different way,” he adds. “NTL Telewest Business was quite retro, quite tired. We weren’t really seen as a credible alternative to BT.”
Challenging BT Business’ stronghold of the market is still key for the new brand, however. Virgin Media Business, by Wareing’s own admission, has “a fraction” of the B2B telecoms behemoth’s customer base. “BT Business is still the default position for many,” he says. “Our challenge is to make sure we drive awareness and understanding of our brand. They have a significantly larger budget, but I’d say people are crying out for an alternative.”
Bolstering the brand
NTL Telewest Business underwent a series of improvement programmes ahead of the launch of Virgin Media Business this February, and the 12 weeks prior to launch also involved a radical overhaul of internal procedures to reflect the new branding. “We redesigned everything, including 45,000 pages of intranet content,” says Wareing.
Another challenge for Wareing is the fact that “the minute you operate under a Virgin brand, expectations about service shoot through the roof.”
He admits to anticipating a drop in satisfaction levels initially, due to such high expectations, even having spent the past few years bolstering provisioning in an attempt to strengthen customer service in advance of the rebrand. “If you use the Virgin brand, you’re bound to SLAs regarding customer service and reliability. There are league tables of all the Virgin companies and you don’t want to be at the bottom,” he says.
Fresh targets
Despite the fact that Virgin Media Business does not have a radically different target audience to NTL Telewest Business, Wareing explains that the brand is “pushing the boundaries” in a couple of areas – namely smaller businesses, those with 50 to 99 employees, and central government.
The entrepreneurial spirit of the Virgin brand, says Wareing, makes it an appropriate fit for small, lean businesses, whilst the public sector has always been a big focus for NTL Telewest Business. Here Virgin Media Business aims to continue to expand. A key factor for such an audience, according to Wareing, is the “big savings targets” they are trying to meet.
“Primarily, the key with such clients is to understand that it’s a relationship business. And they need networks that never fail,” he adds.
An aversion to jargon
Wareing believes that the newly launched Virgin Media Business should talk to people “as if they were consumers.” He is keen to avoid B2B clichés, insisting instead that, despite working in a business context, “People are just people.”
“B2B needn’t be dull,” he says. “Telcos tend to take a very educational approach. They talk about their technical leadership, how much money they’ve spent on their technology. The style is a bit adult-to-child.”
All B2B or part-B2B companies under Virgin’s umbrella are in discussions to launch a quarterly marketing directors’ forum. This will mean that brands such as Virgin Trains, Virgin Money, Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Media Business will be able to work on cross-company propositions. As yet, Wareing admits that this is “an unknown quantity” – though it is likely to be an exciting prospect.
“It genuinely feels like a different company. There is a feeling of having a brand that people are genuinely proud of,” he says. “There’s a sense of relief.”
Ultimately it’s the market which will make the final judgement on the success or otherwise of the latest Virgin launch, yet for someone who had “no desire” to be an accountant, Wareing too must feel a sense of relief.
