Member-only story
Virgin Cola: Richard Branson’s Greatest Failure?
The story of Virgin Cola, Richard Branson’s bold attempt to take on Coca-Cola and Pepsi at their own game. Of course it failed, but it did so stylishly.
A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail
Everything has a story, and I’d like to tell you the story behind a two-decade-old press kit, covered in plastic, that I recently acquired.
On the front, the kit made a claim that it would be important to keep around. “KEEP THIS MEDIA KIT,” the front of the thing stated. “Someday it will be worth a lot of money. Someday it will be known as ‘the first Virgin Cola media kit.’” I’m not sure what they meant by someday, but I purchased this press kit for $9.95 at a used comic book store, and and I’m gonna tell you all about it.
Let’s talk about Virgin Cola, the dark horse of the soda wars.
1979
The year that Virgin introduced its famous “napkin” logo, which was directly inspired by the label’s signing of the Sex Pistols. The simple look came to life after its well-known founder, Richard Branson, realized the company’s original logo, designed for the prog era, made no…
