Branson: Behind the Mask by Tom Bower, Faber & Faber, £20
《面具下的布兰森》(Branson: Behind the Mask)，汤姆•鲍尔(Tom Bower)著，Faber & Faber出版，定价20英镑
Few entrepreneurs have grasped as clearly as Sir Richard Branson the imp­ortance of public relations in modern business. Over the past 25 years, the tycoon has assembled an empire by trading access to the likeable image that he and his Virgin brand project in return for hard assets and stakes in enterprises.
没有几个企业家像理查德•布兰森爵士(Sir Richard Branson)那样深谙公共关系对现代企业的重要性。过去25年间，这位大亨建立起了一个帝国，方法就是利用他本人和他的维珍(Virgin)品牌受喜爱的形象，换取实实在在的资产和企业中的股份。

Behind the happy-go-lucky exterior is a carefully contrived pose. This portrays Branson – in fact a vastly rich, private jet toting tax exile – as a combination of hippy and buccaneer, a scrappy outsider taking on complacent and anti-competitive giants of big business.
在布兰森无忧无虑的外表下，隐藏着精心的算计。这使他像一个兼具嬉皮与海盗特质的综合体，以及一名好斗的“局外人”——常常对得意自满、反对竞争的企业巨头发起挑战。而布兰森事实上非常有钱，拥有私人飞机，是一名“避税流亡者”（tax exile，指为逃避高税负而移居海外的人）。
It is an image that Tom Bower, a stern and un­bend­ing investigative hack of the old school, has over the past decade and a half set out systematically to debunk. He took his first stab in 2000 with the publication of his Branson biography – a book des­c­ribed by its outraged subject as “a foul, foul piece of work from the first words to the last”.
过去15年来，汤姆•鲍尔一直努力系统地揭穿布兰森苦心经营的形象。鲍尔是个顽强、不服输的人，秉持老派的调查作风。2000年，他第一次出击，出版了一本布兰森传记。那本书让布兰森大为光火，他称该书“从头到尾都写得极烂”。
Since then Bower has twice honed his verdict. In 2008, he updated his opus, adding some disobliging chapters on Branson’s fail­ed initial attempt to buy the collapsed building soc­iety Northern Rock. Now he has published a fresh volume. As the title imp­lies, Branson: Behind the Mask continues the theme of probing the dissonance between public image and reality. But un­like its pre­decessors, it omits much of Branson’s business car­eer to focus on recent events, such as his much-delayed attempt to launch a space tourism service.
后来，鲍尔又两度增强了自己的论断。2008年，他更新自己之前的作品，补充了一些章节，毫不客气地讲述了，布兰森最初试图收购陷入困境的住房按揭银行——北岩银行(Northern Rock)时，是如何遭遇失败的。如今，鲍尔又出版了一本新书。如书名《面具下的布兰森》所示，这本新书的主题仍然是探究布兰森的公众形象与实际情况的出入。但与之前的布兰森传记不同，这本书省略了布兰森的大部分经商生涯，聚焦于一些新近发生的事件，比如推迟了很久的太空旅游服务。
Somehow, after years of peddling affordable fun to the masses, Branson has ended up betting the ranch – or at least several wings and the best pasture – on a venture offering four-minute suborbital flights to celebrities and jaded millionaires willing to part with $200,000 a go.
多年来，布兰森一直向大众售卖价格亲民的商品和服务。不知为何，布兰森最终把身家——或至少是最精良的那部分身家——押到了一项提供4分钟亚轨道飞行的太空旅游业务上。该业务的目标客户，是愿意为一次飞行掏20万美元的名人以及那些玩腻了普通玩意的百万富翁。
Branson’s cap­acity for reinvention is not new. It is matched only by his P T Barnum-like ability to generate ex­citement – generally through silly stunts – around the businesses he backs. The bigger question is why we, the public, go along with it.
布兰森拥有高超的创新能力并不是新闻。他的费尼尔司•泰勒•巴纳姆(P T Barnum)式炒作能力同样高超，他常常通过制造一些低级的噱头，来吸引公众对他所支持业务的注意力。更值得关注的问题是，我们的公众为什么会买账。
It is not as if we cannot see behind the PR mask that obsesses Bower. What does it say about us that we still buy into the image, snapping up seats on Branson’s expensive and not very glamorous trains, or, even more puzzlingly, investing in ISAs with Virgin Money (a venture Branson promises with almost comic chutz­pah will deliver his objective of “a fairer distribution of wealth”)?
布兰森的公关面具让鲍尔耿耿于怀，而我们并非不能看穿这一面具。尽管如此，我们仍然买账——购买昂贵的车票乘坐布兰森旗下并不特别豪华的火车，甚至更奇怪的是，在维珍理财(Virgin Money)开设个人储蓄账户（布兰森以近乎滑稽的厚脸皮承诺称，维珍理财将实现他“促进财富公平分配”的目标）。这说明什么呢？
Bower never really ex­plains. Much of the book is spent exploring Virgin’s financial performance, which he concludes is more rickety than its promoter would have us bel­ieve. Stretched as it is across so many ventures, money is always scarce. Too many businesses fail or do not make money. Much of the cash flow has come from businesses that, far from being “challengers”, are in­cumbents in highly regulated industries, such as the state-subsidy-guzzling railways.
鲍尔始终没有真正给出一个解释。该书大部分篇幅都在探讨维珍的财务表现，最后得出结论：维珍的财务状况并不像布兰森希望我们认为的那样稳定，而是摇摇欲坠。虽然维珍业务跨度如此之大，但总是缺乏资金。太多业务失败了，或并未赚钱。维珍集团的大部分现金流，来自受到严格监管的行业，比如享有大笔国家补贴的铁路业，维珍在这些行业中已站稳脚跟，远非新兴的“挑战者”。
One problem with Bow­er’s approach is that his thumb is always pressed rather too firmly on the scales. Branson is forever slightly in the wrong, wheth­er for allowing initiatives to un­ravel, such as “The Project” – an ill-starred magazine app – or taking perfectly sensible commercial decisions, such as pulling out of a failing Formula One team.
鲍尔的方法有一个问题，他总是用太强的偏见来影响他的结论。布兰森所做的任何事情，在鲍尔看来都做得不太对头，无论他是推出了一个失败的商业计划（比如推出命运不佳的杂志应用“The Project”），还是做了个非常合理的商业决定（比如退出一支战绩每况愈下的F1车队）。
Bower questions Branson’s business acumen, criticising him for missing out on the internet and the low-cost airline revolution. But if it were so poor, Virgin would be much smaller than it is.
鲍尔质疑布兰森的商业智慧，批评他错失了两个机会——互联网浪潮和廉价航空革命。但如果布兰森真的那样欠缺商业智慧，维珍就不会发展成如今这样一个庞大的帝国了。
And for a book that promises to take you be­hind Branson’s mask, you get little of the man himself.
此外，该书虽然承诺要揭开布兰森的面具，但书中关于布兰森本人的描写少之又少。
The biggest problem about Bower’s pursuit is that he cannot ultimately run his quarry to ground. Branson now claims Virgin stands for something “beyond making money” and has started dismantling parts of the empire.
鲍尔对布兰森的揭秘行动，最大的问题在于，他最终也未能捉住自己的“猎物”。布兰森如今宣称，维珍的宗旨“超越了赚钱”，并且他已开始解散维珍帝国的某些部分。
But the last chapter on his business career rem­ains to be written. The master of self-reinvention could yet pull off another coup. I predict another book.
但布兰森经商生涯的最后一个章节仍有待撰写。这位自我创新的大师仍可能再出奇招。我猜鲍尔还会再写一本书。