You Forgot to Mention 11.March.2007
I was watching an almost 3 year old PBS special on Marketing, and its really fun to see how things were just three short years ago.
A story they followed throughout the show was that of the, at that time, newly launched airline “Song”. Of course Song has now been reabsorbed into its parent, bankrupt airline, Delta.
Andy Spade, who married Kate Brosnahan so that she would have an easier to remember name for her brand of handbags, was brought in to consult and gamble with the unborn brand. He wanted to do something that is (almost) on the edge, but really becoming more and more mainstream. He wanted to sell women on the feeling of an airline. Generally I am a big fan of that basic idea. However, Spade screwed up in two big ways.
The first way, is that the airline business is primarily driven by price. Computers are also sold primarily on price, so we’ll look at a simple comparison. Because of price Dell has been able to grow so big. They are usually considered the cheapest mainstream brand. You look at the specs when you buy from Dell, you look at the destination with Song. You compare that with their competitors and pick the cheapest. That’s the reason why Apple, who for years has been the coolest computer company around, had a marketshare hovering around 3%. Just getting 3% marketshare wouldn’t be enough for a broke parent company that is one of the largest airlines in the world. Reason number two Spade’s ideas didn’t work: Song actually had cool features. They had features like JetBlue, no not sitting on the tarmac for 10 hours. Features that you couldn’t get on most airlines, however no one ever knew that. Spade argued and fought for his idea that the commercial shouldn’t even show or really mention airplanes. It was so bad, that as the report said, “Many people don’t know what the advertising is for”. The rest of the elements along with their rollout campaign didn’t get any better. They just started making stuff up to get attention. They had men in green spandex march through crowds with TVs attached to their torso. There was even a Song Store for no well defined reason. These are the kind of warning signs that an average, over marketed too, American is going to quickly recognize as “look at me” fluff.
My one and only trip on a Song airplane occurred after Delta announced their planes were being brought back into the rest of the mothership’s fleet, so it was actually on a Delta flight. But I sat down and my jaw dropped. All of the seats were leather (or some faux version there of) and there was a little LCD screen in the back of the seat in front of me. I watched a little SNL, listened to some new albums (a few of which I had been wanting to sample anyway) and was surprised, “we’re here already?”. I actually have those earbuds they gave me laying on my desk right now. I got off the plane raving about how refreshing that experience was.
I wish I had only known about all that before they went belly up. But instead I had a campaign that looked pretty cool, but for all I could tell, was just trying to sell me feelings. What they forgot was to tell and show me why I would have those feelings.