Alex Hunter, a London-based brand and customer experience expert, first made waves as part of the founding team at Virgin America before becoming Global Head of Online for the Virgin Group.
From building a digital strategy that transformed Virgin.com into a global hub to overseeing Sir Richard Branson’s personal digital presence, Alex has helped shape how some of the world’s most iconic brands engage with their audiences.
As a keynote speaker and consultant, Alex has gone on to advise organisations across industries on digital engagement, loyalty, and customer strategy. His practical insights continue to resonate with companies navigating rapid technological change and shifting consumer expectations.
In this exclusive interview with The AI Speakers Agency, Alex reflects on the lessons he has learned from Virgin, shares his perspective on brand loyalty in the digital era, and offers advice to businesses seeking to stand out in an increasingly competitive online marketplace.
Question 1. During your time at Virgin, how did you transform its digital strategy to better connect with audiences?
Alex Hunter: “When I got to Virgin, they had gone through a tempestuous relationship with digital. In the 90s and early 90s even that far back, they had tried to create, you know, kind of a Yahoo-type experience. Everybody was on that bandwagon, and then the dot-com crash and all that, and so they’d really gone back to just a Virgin.com that was just a directory of all of the other businesses.
“But what I knew, and what everybody else knew, was that Virgin and Richard Branson are brands that people wanted to interact with. They wanted to know more about them. So we did a huge project where we completely rebuilt Virgin.com as a destination, as a community site.
“We did a huge play in music — the brand was built on music and we weren’t talking about that at all. It was a place for people to come and talk to us and try and engage with Richard, and learn about the brand and all of the 300 businesses in the group at the time.
“That really helped bridge the gap between what is a very diverse group of companies across the world, and tell the story and add a little bit more flavour to the brand itself. So it went really well, and then this sort of sharing of ideas across the group and across the verticals — it was a really fun part of my career. I look back on it very fondly.”
Question 2. You personally guided Richard Branson’s online presence. What insights did that experience give you about building authentic digital leadership?
Alex Hunter: “I learned that he was a Luddite — not a massive fan of technology. I have unlimited respect and love for Richard Branson; he’s just a top guy. But he is a very analogue — or at least was a very analogue — guy. He has these stacks of notebooks that follow him around everywhere that he’s kept. They kind of chronicle the birth of every Virgin business, including the mother brand.
“But he likes to sit there and write things down, and you know it’s a satisfying thing to do so I can understand it. But again, he is a person that people want access to. So we got him on Twitter, and it took a lot of persuasion. We sort of had to sit there, while he’s not exactly the most tech-centric guy. He’s of that generation, as cool as he may be.
“But then, when he realised there was an opportunity to reach a broader audience with messages that he thought were really important — especially around social entrepreneurship and philanthropy — he took to it very quickly. And he is now, certainly from what I can see, a huge proponent of digital as a platform, an engine for change. So that’s satisfying to see.”
Question 3. In an increasingly crowded digital landscape, what should brands prioritise to genuinely stand out online?
Alex Hunter: “It’s been very difficult in the last 18 months with Covid, but I don’t think that this idea has changed much. With Covid we’ve had all of the platforms that we were used to doing business with — shops and restaurants and bars and shopping malls and aeroplanes and hotels, etc. — taken away from us almost overnight. We had to react very quickly to that.
“That has increased the amount of noise online exponentially. The paradox here is that we’ve forgotten that behind every click and every call is a human being. Now more than ever, as we sit isolated in our flats and apartments, we want to be recognised as human beings. We’re not this homogeneous group of people.
“I think the businesses that have reacted the best to this situation, and hopefully will continue to do this, are the ones that do what they say they’re going to do. They don’t try and talk their way through it, saying “we’re all in this together” and “in these unprecedented times” — with unprecedented use of the word unprecedented. Just doing what we say we’re going to do, consistently doing what we’ve always done, is hugely reassuring in quite distressing and uncomfortable times.
“If you have always done one thing and you’ve done it well, just continue to do it. Reach out to people who are clearly fans of what you do. Engage with them on whatever platform they engage with you on. Keep that conversation going on a one-on-one and one-to-many level. Don’t over-engineer the whole “we’re all in this together” thing, because it’s actually quite repellent. We got very tired of it very quickly.
“So that opportunity to reinvigorate those one-on-one relationships, I think, is a huge differentiator in a time when we’re all craving something different.”
Question 4. With customer expectations evolving, what is the key to fostering true loyalty in the 21st century?
Alex Hunter: “I think there are a couple of things. Like I said earlier, one of the most important things for loyalty is remembering that with every transaction that’s happening there’s a human. And we need to acknowledge that and remember that they are individuals with individual preferences.
“Loyalty is an interesting one. Loyalty is a fundamentally emotional concept. You cannot have loyalty — true loyalty — to a brand, person, dog, whatever, without feeling something. It is physiologically impossible. The part of the brain that controls emotion also controls action.
“So if we want somebody to do something — buy something else, come back into the store, have a conversation, click the buy button, sign the contract — we’ve got to make them feel something. Understanding that it is a fundamentally human, emotional idea completely changes the way not only will you perceive the customer, but this whole idea.
“And to that end, making sure that we stop emphasising transaction, trying to milk every penny out of every possible click and transaction — we’ve spent the last 20 years optimising that. Instead, take a step back and look at the relationship we have: the provenance of the relationship with the customer, all of the data that that relationship has generated, either from what the customer has told us or what we’ve learned about them from their behaviour.
“Invest time, money and energy in that relationship. For every 10p we leave on the counter for giving away something that gets the customer coming back in the door, we’ll get £10 back over the life of the relationship. Because we’ve understood the customer, we’ve predicted needs, we’ve even done something as basic as remember their name. It’s so small but it’s so powerful.
“It instantly humanises. We’re no longer a commodity as a customer. We feel recognised, remembered, and important. That is indescribably powerful in building loyalty.”
Question 5. Looking back on your career, which professional achievement are you most proud of, and why?
Alex Hunter: “That’s easy: Virgin America. That was the airline in California, in the US. I was part of the team that founded Virgin America. I joined when there was just a handful of us — we had no aeroplanes, no money, no licence to fly, no nothing.
“And at the end, we created something that people genuinely loved. In fact, the mission of the airline was to create an airline people love, because at the time in America, airlines were almost universally loathed. We thought, well that’s a reasonable challenge to rise to: create an American airline that people love, as opposed to wanting to slam your hands in a car door over and over again.
“And we did it. I was very proud of that project and my very small part in it. While the airline was acquired a few years ago, I think that the legacy of improvement that Virgin America had on the industry in America — and perhaps even beyond — as a whole is indelible. And that’s something I’m intensely proud of.”
This exclusive interview with Alex Hunter was conducted by The Inspirational Leadership Speakers Agency.
