The world of private aviation marketing savants may not be accustomed to reaching into the well of 1980’s cult television, but . . . . sometimes we must. Not only that, smart people who study strategy and management have shown that Faceman, Hannibal, B.A. and Murdock have something larger than themselves to share with us.
If the management of any company were to define risk as the integration of different business units and how well they perform together, the A-Team is one of the best examples of the typical integration of those units. To use the “your business as an engine” analogy…. any contemporary engine, be it a diesel or turbine engine, has a lot of moving parts. As long as they all do their job (to the tolerances the engineer specified) then the goal of power output is achieved. The failure or degradation of one part, however, especially at 4,000 or 40,000 RPM, can lead to disaster or in a best case scenario, tremendous inefficiency.
That is what makes the A-Team such an interesting case study: Knowingly putting themselves into high risk (a/k/a 40,000 RPM situations) time and again, they always come out unscathed in their wonderfully scripted cartoon explosion and action fueled episodes. In fact the recipe for their rising action, confrontation and solution is also classically defined and continued. (There are websites that allow you to build your own episode.) A local tech pundit even quipped, “The casting for the show was seemingly done out of some MIT Sloan School of Management playbook.”
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Popularity: 21%
It always amuses me when I approach new clients and am told, “Our marketing strategy is great, we don’t need you”. I always have to bite my tongue and come up short of saying, “Yeah, well prove it”.
It is a tired cliche, but still a truism: The proof is in the pudding. Any restaurant owner will tell you their pudding is the best, but if they never see it leave the kitchen and never chat with the customers, how do they know?
All too often folks assume that because they have a marketing strategy or have hired someone to do it for them they are covered, the job is done. However, without any form of tracking you never really know.
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Popularity: 18%
Being a German workaholic, my father came to America in the late 60’s with a few hundred bucks (most of which disappeared into the pockets of his fellow immigrant taxi driver upon arrival in New York). Nevertheless, he retired a successful business man with a multi-million dollar company. As I was reminded daily as a child, he worked his butt off doing everything he could to succeed, and built a plastics company from the ground up. Nothing was given- everything was earned. It was this obsession with perpetual labor that convinced me that this was a man who would never retire. Nothing shy of death would stop the man who was impervious to the concept of “time off” from not clocking in 6 to 7 days a week. Needless to say, it came as a surprise when I got that late summer phone call telling me he was selling the company and calling it quits.
Dad was quick to allay my fears of terminal illness or dementia. Ultimately, it was marketing that got him in the end. Dad always took care of everything for himself, trusting none but his two giant, calloused hands to cover ever detail from turning the heat on in the morning to firing up the machinery, then into the front office donning a suit and tie to shake hands, wheel and deal, and watch the business boom. Then the playing field changed.
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Popularity: 35%
Realistically, there are few similarities between these institutions.
Eclipse Aviation is a privately funded aircraft manufacturer. The British Empire is… well, we assume you all know who “they” are. The common thread, that binds them, however, is our good friend Mahatma Ghandi who famously offered:
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Popularity: 55%
The Survival of Part 135 Companies in a Fractional Market
Adam was helping me understand a client file the other day, when something odd struck me:
Fractional ownership of jets has eclipsed private air charter.
The funny thing about this trend is that despite the lack of scalability or profitability within many fractional firms, the reality is that many customers seem to prefer to consume their private aircraft experience one of three ways:
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Popularity: 63%
Adam asked me to start entering my thoughts here instead of the emails I send regularly. Since I don’t fly, or work around airplanes often, I had to think of a marketing story that would relate to the challenges of finding, retaining and growing the customer base.
Naturally, futons were the next logical extension to my limited aircraft repertoire. It began with my wife requesting that we replace our lumpy old futon mattress with a new one, preferrably something slick and sexy like the image to the right. (”Look honey.. they come in BLACK now!”) Living in the heart of rural New Hampshire, it is near impossible to find a store that sells futons, never mind one that carries a variety of options.
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Popularity: 46%
The strangest thing about getting older is that at 36 you really shouldn’t feel or call yourself “old.” At that age, in most circles, you suffer sneers of derision from veterans that have seen it all, and now know it all. Not so in aviation - you can start at 20 and by 36 be an old man.
That is why when journalists call The Air Charter Directory looking for answers as to what is going on in the industry, my voice grows hoarse and crabby at the same time, though I try to breathe hope into the line, knowing that each additional writer that pokes and diggs at the surface of the strange world of private air charter, increases the chances of its evolution.
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Popularity: 65%
This article was first published on IRMI.com and is reproduced with permission. Copyright 2007, International Risk Management Institute, Inc.
It is not often that we write about clients but in the case of Worldwide Jet, the inner workings of his company were too good not to share. This is a charter company that makes money with their own heavy jet equipment. On the surface this seems absurd, but anyone who knows corporate aviation, the charter business, etc. will agree that pretty much “no one” makes money. If they do, it is only via management of “someone else’s aircraft” that they get paid to crew, maintain, charter and hangar.
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Popularity: 100%
Finding clients is not easy.
Seth Godin recently posted a story on how even blind squirrels find the occasional acorn. God knows how many of his books I’ve shipped to our directory and consulting clients. He’s distilled one of the most basic struggles of the dynamic FBO, air charter or any other aviation business into a concise story.
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Popularity: 69%
