Towards the end of Tom Alexander’s tenure as chief executive of Virgin Mobile, he was forced to laugh off suggestions that he had grown a beard to look more like his boss, Sir Richard Branson. By the time he had taken the chief executive’s chair at Orange’s UK business 18 months ago, the whiskers were gone and a clean-shaven Mr Alexander unveiled an unlikely strategy to restore the company to its previous position as the country’s largest mobile operator.
Now he is on the cusp of achieving that ambition after forging a merger with T-Mobile’s UK business. He has also been busy preparing for the company’s iPhone launch this month. And once again Mr Alexander is sporting a beard — perhaps a sign of all the long hours he has put in over the past six months? Not quite.
“It’s back by popular demand,” he said, revealing that a recent staff poll in the company’s internal magazine had resulted in a three-to-one vote for the beard to return. Popular demand, however, may not mean what you might assume: “I photograph better than I look.”
Mr Alexander was speaking as he prepared for tomorrow’s launch of the iPhone, a handset he identified as a device that Orange, in his words, “simply had to have”. It is an odd admission, given that O2 has been selling the iPhone unchallenged for two years and Orange has a huge array of handsets, such as the HTC Hero, Motorola Dext and LG’s fancy watch-phone that some say can challenge the iPhone in terms of functionality and customer appeal.
Yet Mr Alexander is acutely aware that the iPhone acts like a magnet for high-spending consumers. More than a quarter of a million people have already contacted Orange to obtain one, even before the company revealed its pricing structure.
“It was the missing piece in the jigsaw. It will do what it’s meant to do on Orange,” he said — surely a dig at the network problems that some O2 customers have experienced over recent months.
Mr Alexander is agog at what can be done with a phone, describing a recent application he tested that recognises any object it is pointed at and provides a wealth of information about it. “This is the start of a real revolution. We are on the very tip of the iceberg in terms of what people will want to do with these devices. All the information is right in the palm of your hand.”
Nevertheless, as important as the iPhone is to Orange’s short-term growth, Mr Alexander still prefers to use a Motorola most of the time. “It’s a brand I have an allegiance to and I am reluctant to change,” he shrugged. An as-yet unreleased Motorola model acts as his main phone, although at weekends he happily shuffles between an iPhone, a Dext, another Motorola model and his watch-phone.
Mr Alexander is widely credited with breathing new life into Orange after years of stagnation. During the glory years, the company’s advertising campaigns, under the ubiquitous slogan “The Future’s Bright”, and rapid growth propelled it ahead of its more established rivals. By 2002, it was the country’s largest mobile phone provider.
The business lost its way after France Télécom completed its takeover of the British company. Orange appeared to be stifled by its French parent, under a succession of chief executives who struggled to revive the company’s brand and its fortunes.
Mr Alexander’s appointment 18 months ago signalled a change in tack for Orange, with France Télé-com loosening its grip on the British business after years of underperformance.
“I have been given the freedom and backing I needed at Orange. I haven’t run this business as an outpost of a big French corporate company,” he said, something that his predecessors may have struggled to claim with a straight face.
He admits that the surprise appointment was a gamble for France Télécom, since his reputation is more entrepreneurial than as a turnaround specialist. Even his dress sense would have raised alarms bells at France Télécom a few years ago. The former Virgin man never wears a tie and usually wears jeans.
The gamble appears to have paid off, if the company’s latest results are anything to go by. Orange added 257,000 new customers in the three months to September 30 — its fastest growth rate in three years, even before the iPhone effect kicks in.
“This business is really, really motoring,” Mr Alexander said. One area that has shown a marked improvement is marketing, which for years had struggled to stand out from the pack and had suffered when compared to its past success. It is an area that Mr Alexander immediately addressed on his arrival and the rising customer numbers suggest that the brand is starting to regain some of its lustre.
“When you see an Orange ad, we want you to recognise it as an Orange ad,” he said, something that was not always the case with the more esoteric campaigns in previous years.
Marketing is an area that Mr Alexander knows well after building Virgin Mobile up from scratch, largely on the back of clever advertising campaigns and attractive pricing. The business caught the wave of rapid growth in the prepay market and by 2005 had racked up five million customers. Mr Alexander said that Virgin Mobile, alongside Orange, had helped to “bring mobile to the masses”.
When Virgin Mobile was sold to NTL in 2006, Mr Alexander effectively retired to his Somerset pile, having presided over the largest return on investment that the Virgin group of companies has ever achieved.
He personally walked away with more than £20 million and decided to “enjoy the money”, partly indulging his love of car racing and old classic cars and looking forward to spending more time on the racing track.
As a teenager, Mr Alexander won the European karting championship, but his dream of becoming a Formula One grand prix legend was quashed when a sponsorship deal fell through. He was 21 at the time.
The passion for speed has not dimmed and he now owns his own racing team — 22GT. However, the Orange transformation has taken its toll on the latest stage in his competitive racing career and he was forced to pull out of the Goodwood Festival of Speed in July amid the iPhone negotiations and the lengthy due diligence process with T-Mobile.
“Racing used to be like a cold shower when I was younger, but if I am going to race, I have to be competitive. I love to win. It is a real conundrum balancing the two [work and racing]. It is very difficult,” he said.
Although he is more well known for his racing, Mr Alexander also enjoys restoring furniture, a craft that he picked up from his father, an inventor who developed the first grow-bag. Given the job that he has done restoring Orange’s business, it would be a fair bet that he is fairly good at it.
CV
Born 1959
Education Millfield, Somerset
Career: Professional motor racer, winning European karting championship as a teenager, before switching to cars. 1978: joined Key Pneumatics, an industrial robotics company; 1986: switch to the telecoms industry, as a salesman for Telia and Ericsson, the Swedish groups. He moved on to BT Cellnet and rose to the position of deputy commercial director; 1999: founded Virgin Mobile after a similar idea fell through at BT; 2006: left Virgin Mobile after its sale to NTL; 2008: return to telecoms as chief executive of Orange UK Family Married, two children
Q&A
Who, or what, is your mentor?
My father. He was an inventor and his passion for creating things was a real inspiration to me
Does money motivate you?
Not from a personal perspective. In my current role I’m motivated more by knowing that my actions can create something groundbreaking and culturally significant for the country
What was the most important event in your working life?
The day I persuaded Richard Branson to take a punt on this new-fangled mobile business
Which person do you most admire?
My wife. I’ve no idea how she puts up with me!
What gadget must you have?
Currently, I’m loving the Orange Watchphone from LG — it’s a boyhood dream come true
What does leadership mean to you?
It means taking your people on a journey and helping them to fulfil their potential together
How do you relax?
Racing cars — though I’m getting less and less time to do that these days
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