BrandDigital | BrandSimple: The Blog

The first rule of good marketing is to learn as much about your customers as possible. In my new book, BrandDigital I explain how the advent of digital tools and tactics has made this easier than ever before. Product review sites, social media sites, and blogs are rife with commentary about what people like and don’t like about brands and brand experiences. While this abundance of information might be overwhelming to marketers, I also explain in BrandDigital how smart marketers filter through the online world of words to determine exactly which sites and blogs are most credible and most relevant to their needs and fields of expertise. I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Shashank Nigam, editor of the blog “Simpliflying,” a site well-respected by those both in the airline industry and those interested in marketing to travelers. It’s a unique blog, both in its comprehensiveness and its emphasis on airline branding. I invite you to listen to my interview with Shashank- and further invite you to post your comments to Simpliflying.com.

In my book, BrandSimple, I talk about JetBlue. Over the past few days everyone has been talking about JetBlue, but not for any of the reasons I chose to talk about it. I used it as an example of a brand that succeeded as a result of identifying something meaningfully different to offer people who want or need to fly. Unlike the big, ambiguous airlines, JetBlue found a way to put the “humanity back into flying.” This phrase became the driving force behind everything the little brand did to make flying fun, from its airfares to its personnel, to its in-flight entertainment. Last week, as thousands of people were stranded at JFK and cancellation reports multiplied as quickly as news reports, flying JetBlue was anything but fun. It proved to be no different than any other airline – any other big airline that is.

CEO, David Neeleman, took on the immediate challenge by doing exactly what he should have done. He apologized and took the hit as the company’s most senior officer without any excuses. His business model was off course and he would do whatever necessary to fix it, no easy task now that the company has grown from a small team of mavericks to a sprawling organization. While this is all well and a very good start, it’s nowhere near the size of the challenge the airline has ahead of it as a brand. It wasn’t the fact that passengers were left on the tarmac that made it a newsworthy story. It was that JetBlue had broken its brand promise. To repair its promise, JetBlue has to figure out how to “put the humanity back into flying,” but this time as a larger company – something that will be very hard to do at its value price point. The proof of its newly repaired promise will require more than Mr. Neeleman spontaneously showing up to greet passengers. And while a noble gesture, it will take more than a passengers’ Bill of Rights which only serves to placate flyers if the experience gets too bad. While immediate crisis control will help JetBlue survive in the short term, it’s the longer term the airline must consider. It must find a meaningfully different way to make its original brand promise fly again, this time on a higher level. Don’t underestimate the JetBlue team. It’s in their company culture to make this happen. And I, for one, have full confidence they will.

Will making an airline bigger make it better? That’s the obvious question being asked by any number of people regarding the news about the US Airways bid for Delta. The answer is yes, if – and if.

The first “if” is the business “if.” If the merger between US Air and Delta creates operational efficiencies of scale then there’s a chance bigger could be better, for both the combined company and the passengers. In this case, bigger could solve some big business issues. (And, by the way, calling the new company Delta, given the fact that it’s a stronger name from a global perspective was a good first move.)

Okay, let’s say this is done successfully. The second “if” is the branding “if.”

The real challenge for those in favor of a merger between US Air and Delta is how to make the experience of flying this big, new airline relevantly different – relevant differentiation being the key to all successful brands. I’m not talking about flight attendant uniforms or in-flight entertainment. I’m referring to things that bring the new operating efficiencies to life for passengers. Things that have a tangibly positive impact on the entire flying experience, from the reservation process, to the routing choices, to the baggage retrieval. This is what really distinguishes one airline from another. In other words, if the tickets are cheaper and I’m treated like I bought the cheap seats, forget it.

If bigger fixes the business model, that’s good. If the new brand can’t figure out how to deliver bigger as better, that’s bad. While bigger may address the benefits of scale, if there’s nothing different about how the new airline executes bigger from a branding standpoint, the whole thing could be a big dud.