Richard Bran­son

I re­cent­ly start­ed up my own aes­thet­ic cen­tre in the Philip­pines, and I'm hav­ing a hard time get­ting our name out there. What ad­vice can you of­fer on mar­ket­ing a fledg­ling com­pa­ny? (By the way, I'm a film­mak­er by pro­fes­sion, but I was born in­to a fam­i­ly of busi­ness-mind­ed peo­ple.)

Louis Padil­la, the Philip­pines

To get your brand out there, you need to present your busi­ness dif­fer­ent­ly than your com­pe­ti­tion does. Louis, you might not be ex­pe­ri­enced at mar­ket­ing, but your back­ground in film is a huge ad­van­tage. If you com­bine at­ten­tion-get­ting footage and so­cial me­dia ex­po­sure, you can cre­ate some­thing that res­onates around the globe and in­stant­ly builds your brand's rep­u­ta­tion.

My men­tor–Sir Fred­die Lak­er, the own­er of Lak­er Air­ways–gave me sim­i­lar ad­vice in Vir­gin's ear­ly days, and this even­tu­al­ly de­fined our mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, help­ing to make the Vir­gin brand in­ter­na­tion­al­ly fa­mous.

When we launched Vir­gin At­lantic, we were en­ter­ing an in­dus­try rife with big play­ers. "Make sure you ap­pear on the front page and not the back pages," Sir Fred­die told me.

"You are go­ing to have to get out there and sell your­self. Make a fool of your­self; what­ev­er it takes. Oth­er­wise you won't sur­vive."

I took Fred­die's ad­vice to heart. We drew at­ten­tion to Vir­gin At­lantic by cre­at­ing spec­ta­cles. We float­ed an air­ship with a sign say­ing "BA can't get it up" above the Lon­don Eye Fer­ris wheel and flew a "UFO" over Lon­don in the ear­ly hours of April Fools' Day.

Over more than 40 years, the Vir­gin team has launched hun­dreds of com­pa­nies world­wide, and I've done some out­ra­geous­ly fun and en­ter­tain­ing things in the name of mar­ket­ing our prod­ucts and ser­vices.

I donned a wed­ding dress to launch Vir­gin Brides; drove a tank down Fifth Av­enue in New York to launch Vir­gin Co­la; jumped off the roof of the Palms Ho­tel and Casi­no to cel­e­brate the first Vir­gin Amer­i­ca flight to Las Ve­gas; ma­neu­vered an am­phibi­ous car across the Eng­lish Chan­nel to mark Vir­gin At­lantic's 20th an­niver­sary; and drank cham­pagne while rap­pelling down the side of a new Space­port air hang­er for Vir­gin Galac­tic.

Our team has donned count­less cos­tumes, thrown hun­dreds of par­ties and en­list­ed myr­i­ad peo­ple to help us along the way. While not every­thing has al­ways gone ac­cord­ing to plan–and I've def­i­nite­ly made a fool of my­self–it has been worth it: we've put our prod­ucts and ser­vices on the map.

Of course, Vir­gin isn't the on­ly com­pa­ny that has used in­ven­tive mar­ket­ing to make a splash.

The band U2 put their al­bum in the spot­light by giv­ing free copies to every­one with an iTunes ac­count; Sam­sung was be­hind the come­di­enne Ellen De­generes' fa­mous self­ie at the Os­cars a cou­ple of years ago; Taco Bell out­raged some and en­ter­tained oth­ers by plac­ing an ad in The New York Times pro­claim­ing "Taco Bell Buys the Lib­er­ty Bell"; and Burg­er King rein­vent­ed its sig­na­ture burg­er with the re­lease of the "Left-Hand­ed Whop­per." The list goes on.

Star­tups and fledg­ing com­pa­nies es­pe­cial­ly have a lot to gain from such tac­tics and do. Dol­lar Shave Club was a rel­a­tive­ly un­known com­pa­ny un­til it re­leased an on­line in­tro­duc­to­ry video in 2012 that went vi­ral. The brand quick­ly achieved glob­al fame with mil­lions of views.

So, Louis, get think­ing. Ask your­self: why did you start your busi­ness? What is it that sets your prod­ucts and ser­vices apart from the rest? What would you ul­ti­mate­ly like to achieve?

Once you have that down on pa­per, brain­storm some fun and en­ter­tain­ing ways you can de­liv­er your mes­sage. And don't shy away from ask­ing for help. You said you were born in­to a busi­ness-mind­ed fam­i­ly; ask for their ideas and opin­ions.

If you run in­to naysay­ers, re­mind them that no mat­ter how great your prod­uct or ser­vice is, no one will hear about it if you don't at­tract at­ten­tion. It's that sim­ple. So do some­thing orig­i­nal. Do some­thing your com­peti­tors have nev­er thought of.

Above all, re­mem­ber that in­ven­tive mar­ket­ing–and cre­ativ­i­ty in oth­er ar­eas of the busi­ness–is not just re­ward­ing, but a lot of fun.

(Richard Bran­son is the founder of the Vir­gin Group and com­pa­nies such as Vir­gin At­lantic, Vir­gin Amer­i­ca, Vir­gin Mo­bile and Vir­gin Ac­tive. He main­tains a blog at www.vir­gin.com/richard-bran­son/blog. You can fol­low him on Twit­ter at twit­ter.com/richard­bran­son. To learn more about the Vir­gin Group: www.vir­gin.com.)

(Ques­tions from read­ers will be an­swered in fu­ture columns. Please send them to Richard­Bran­son@ny­times.com. Please in­clude your name, coun­try, e-mail ad­dress and the name of the web­site or pub­li­ca­tion where you read the col­umn.)