AA
You know you’ve got a problem when people don’t want to fly your airline because of your equipment.
Another quote from Kelly. And, right on the money. American Airlines has problems. Their new ad campaign claims to have insight into why a person flys. The quote on the splash page embodies everything that is wrong with spending thousands, if not millions, of dollars on an ad campaign rather than infusing the money into the customer’s experience.
It’s the destination, not the flight. It’s why you fly.
American’s right, we fly because we can’t wait to get to the destination. Some of us can’t wait to see a loved one, or get to the next business destination. But, we also care about what happens in flight. We care how comfortable your seats are, what amentities you provide. Even if those amentities are the “little things.” We care.
Right now American’s entire fleet is littered with some of the worst airplanes developed in the last 20 years. The customer experience is a tragedy. Frontier is a little airline run out of Denver, Colorado with an entire fleet of the best planes on the market, Direct TV in-flight, great snacks, and pilots with a sense of humor.
You can jump up and down screaming at your customers all you want. Even if you’ve got a brilliantly designed ad campaign, the product matters. Design matters. The experience matters.
Why not spend that ad money on keeping pillows on your planes? Changing the snacks? Giving your pilots a comedy class? Maybe even evolving your brand (that aluminum look has to go) and the old-school MD80s all of your customers hate.
April 19th, 2005 at 5:55 am
Even “complacent” can’t describe American anymore. They are a household brand, so crappy marketing manages to fly. No pun intended.
April 19th, 2005 at 9:52 am
Landor actually did the aluminum brushed look — only after being coerced… story goes that Landor suggested something other than aluminum, but one of the marketing execs insisted upon having brushed aluminum after they painted and repainted a 737 numerous times until it “met his fancy”.
I think we have the AA execs of the 90s to blame for their meltdown. But some of the same guys are still there.
They’ve started to have a rebound (at least in their stock price), but advertising should be a halo after you’ve already reformed the customer experience — not before…
Just take a look at how weak their mission and vision is…
(http://www.aa.com/content/amrcorp/corporateInformation/facts/structure.jhtml)
If you compare that with Frontier’s:
http://www.frontierairlines.com/about/awda.asp
It seems like “a whole different animal” to me!
(btw, these guys helped them re-brand: http://www.srg.com)