How JetBlue Tends To Its Brand
Yesterday I wrote about how US Airways (LCC) was running a fantastic operation but really paid no attention to its brand. Today, I'm looking at the opposite end of the spectrum with JetBlue (JBLU). A recent interview in Advertising Age with JetBlue SVP Marketing and Commercial Marty St George shows an airline that pays close attention to its brand and how it can build it going forward.
There's no question that steering an airline that cares about its brand is a little foreign to someone like Marty. It's not a knock on him but rather a nod to his past history at several legacy airlines. (Full disclosure: I worked in Marty's marketing group at United in 2004-2005.) But Marty seems to have settled in quite nicely as part of the Blue Crew. He sounds like a marketer that really does care about his brand. Here are just a few points that I took away from his chat with Advertising Age.
You Don't Have to Spend a Ton to Make a Lasting Impact It's reported that JetBlue spends $30 million a year on ad spending. For an airline that did more than $3 billion in revenue in 2009, that's not much. It's also far less than brand-leader Southwest Airlines (LUV) spends on its campaigns, but that's not a bad thing. JetBlue is smart with its money and it does pay off. Marty noted:
We really feel that we got the level of integration from Mullen [JetBlue's new ad agency of record] that could get $2 or $3 worth of impact for every $1 we spent. And when we did the reference checking with some of their other accounts, particularly Zappos, we found they had a track record of moving the needle.Brand Is More Than Advertising Advertising is simply a vehicle for building a brand. It can help set the tone in the public eye, but it's also not the only thing. For JetBlue:
Our brand is founded on differentiation -- XM Radio, leather, five consecutive J.D. Power awards and the most legroom of any airline, which is something we talk about in our advertising right now. These are attributes our competitors don't talk about and one thing we are not is a commoditized brand.Contrast this with US Airways, which is trying to create a brand around reliability, convenience, and appearance but isn't talking about it. That's already a more difficult branding proposition in the eyes of the consumer (it's not nearly as tangible) but that only means that emphatic communication is more important to making it stick.
Advertising Can Help Shift the Brand Even though JetBlue has built a strong brand, that doesn't mean it isn't looking to make changes to it. For example, JetBlue has been trying to grow its corporate business, and advertising can help.
It was a big conversation during the briefing process with Mullen. A relatively small percentage of our business base is business customers but we need to grow that. It was a big chunk of the process we went through with all the agencies ... we're confident based on what we've seen that we'll be able to attract new consumers without alienating the current customers.It's not easy to effect a shift like that when you already have a strong brand, but it's something that a good advertising campaign can do.
Social Media Also Builds the Brand JetBlue has one of the strongest brands when it comes to social media. On Twitter, it has more than 1.5 million followers, enough to make the airline one of the top 100 Twitter accounts. That's a big deal, but does it really help the brand? Without question.
People call it social media but we actually see it as the opposite of media; it's direct communication with the brand on a one-to-one level.While advertising has the ability to communicate from one (the brand) to many, social media can do that and communicate one to one. It's also more cost effective than other channels (like phone customer service), so it's a win-win situation.
For JetBlue, every customer interaction is viewed as a way to communicate the brand. Whomever makes that connection with the customer is a brand ambassador. For JetBlue, this has led to one of the strongest (and one of only a few) brands in the airline industry. Others should take notice.
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