Feature: easyGroup: still a brand manager’s dream

Tiger Woods burst onto the international scene in 1996. Youthful, full of new ideas and intent on undoing the existing golfing hierarchy, ‘The Tiger’ would come to be a sporting superpower. Today, he is feted wherever he goes; the fatted calf is slaughtered in his honour; and his brand values, honesty, youthfulness and polite disrespect for the established order, are so strong that the product endorsements just keep rolling in.

Today, another young brand celebrates just over a decade’s birthday. Above easyGroup shimmers a Tiger-style halo. And like the athletic man from California, the easyGroup brand is something that makes people feel good. Attach the easy label and consumers instantly respect you; they know what they’re getting and feel happy.

The ‘easy’ brand was founded in 1995 by Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the son of a wealthy Greek-Cypriot shipping magnate. Born into great wealth (his father bought him a Porsche and yacht for his 18th birthday), he later quipped that his best business tip was ‘having a wealthy father’. It is therefore somewhat ironic that he built a business empire around making a host of services, especially flying, affordable to the vast majority of the population. There is a dizzying diversity of services or products under the easy banner. Over the years Stelios has established easyInternetcafe, easyDVD, easyCinema, easyBus, easy4Men, easyPizza, easyCar, easyMusic, easyCruise, easyMoney, easyMobile and, of course, easyJet.

A dissection of the brand reveals varying levels of success. Some, like easyJet, have been a spectacular success. Other ventures have been less successful. easyInternetcafe, for example, started in 1999 at five locations in London, but has now virtually closed after a bitter court case with a rival firm. easyCinema, established as recently as 2003, has now ceased trading. Initially offering screenings from as little as 20p if booked well in advance, the cinema struggled as major distributors were not prepared to release the films.

easy4men was a men’s toiletries range launched in partnership with boots in 2004. Pitched as ‘no nonsense’ toiletries for men, it was launched in Boots retail outlets, which Stelios later admitted was not the best place to sell the product. The partnership was dissolved in 2006. Finally, easyMobile was a big flop, signing up only 5,000 customers in the first two months of its launch. The business model, which relied entirely on customers buying a SIM card on the company’s website and inserting it in their existing handset, failed to win over customers.

But such is the strength of the easy brand, many of these financial failures are seen by consumers as another valiant attempt by Stelios to take on the big players and lower costs for consumers. And despite these failures, there have been many successes, of which easyJet is undoubtedly the biggest.

Starting life in 1995 with only two internal UKroutes, easyJet is now Europe’s second largest no-frills carrier flying to 73 destinations across Europe. Like Tiger Woods’ entry in to the golf scene, easyJet has had a big impact on established players like British Airways, forcing them to lower costs and more accurately define what they stand for. And the business model seems to be working. Last November easyJet unveiled new aircraft orders for 104 Airbus planes that could triple the size of its current fleet. The expansion drive follows news that by the end of 2006 passenger numbers had risen by 11% and pre-tax profits had grown to £129m. Even more interestingly, recent reports indicate that easyJet will soon be partnering with Virgin Airways and AirAsia to form a Malaysiabased alliance that would become the world’s first budget global network. If these reports are true, they indicate another progression for the easyJet brand which is likely to lead to the brand becoming internationally recognised as a major player, not just a regional carrier.

The world looks upon the planet’s Tiger Woods’ and easyGroups with admiration and envy. Both brands had a transformational impact on their area; they cleverly exploited the ‘small man standing up to the big players’ narrative to create strong brand images that consumers associate with trust, success and reliability. The result? Unlike other brands, ‘The Tiger’ can lose a few championships and easyGroup can fail in a couple ventures and be forgiven by supporters and consumers. The brands are so strong that failures are quickly forgotten and successes acknowledged as normal.