Since its inaugural flight in August 2007, Virgin America has won a number of awards for service and quality. During Virgin Atlantic's first years, we would have been obliged to launch a massive newspaper, television and billboard campaign to draw attention to these achievements, but advertising has changed a great deal over the past decade. Now we can use the power of social media-with the help of clever viral campaigns, e-mail communications and online advertising-to generate support, coverage and sales. This change means that a company's large size is no longer a guarantee of its continuing success. With the playing field more level, big brands can no longer rely merely on expensive marketing campaigns to generate sales. Smaller players can build their global presence by using social media and word-of-mouth to promote their services without spending a lot of money. This has helped smaller players to punch above their weight. Biggest does not mean best, and it never has. Now, even if they don't have the biggest wallets, small companies can achieve recognition as the best in the world.
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. 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 Web site or publication where you read the column.