Aviation Marketing Intelligence

Sifting through my inbox lately leads to a lot of despair. Fuel & Jet-A malaise, the economy, the climate, the dwindling US Dollar, the tragedies never stop. News and media folks (myself included I suppose) are more drawn to dark stuff. Frankly, it sells better. Because of this trend, there is a whole new generation of millennials who were born into an era where the news is always bad and everything is shocking so that at the end of the day, nothing is really that shocking.

Then I saw this story about AirTran. Much like Southwest, this is a noteworthy story of a firm that makes money the old fashioned way: They use math. They keep their head down. And they persist.

When you read through the article, you’ll come across the assertion : “Challenge every lie.”

That is perhaps the most important thing for aviation writers, since a good part of aviation marketing is sustained on lies. You might think (you know, if you’re an alien traveling from a different planet for a visit here) that part of the aerodynamic effect that makes aviation businesses fly are carefully contstructed lies.

The lie “du jour” appears to be that fuel prices are magically related to people you have to lay off. Which only reinforces the importance of your relationship with your customers: If you can’t get them to agree to pay for something you have no or very little control over then maybe it is time you start working on that problem.

Consider this challenge: If you knew the fuel component of your airline ticket, and you saw that number double, would you not take that trip to Bordeaux in August to ride your motorcycle around the Pyrenees? No, I didn’t think so.

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