Clever Marketing 101—From Air Force to Zeppelins

I've always been a fan of clever marketing. You can instantly recognize great marketing when you see it since it is always creative, effective at generating attention and often fun in the process. Sadly, it’s far from a daily occurrence, but it’s fun to sit back and grin when you see it. I worked for a large high tech firm for 16 years in marketing and later 9 years in sales and I saw a lot of ho-hum marketing with occasional flashes of brilliance. This is the norm in most industries.

A lot of people confuse marketing with…

advertising or even sales. Advertising almost always reports to a marketing department and sometime sales and marketing report to the same vice president, but are usually separate organizations. Advertising is the exposure a product gets when a company pays for the product to appear in the media, whether in radio, television, newspaper or magazine ads, or increasingly through internet banners and online search ads (like the ones you see along the side when you use google for searching the internet).

The classic definition of marketing is the 4 P’s—Product, Price, Promotion, and People (which stands for product distribution). When I talk about clever marketing, I’m usually thinking of Promotion, which includes finding creative ways to get a product mentioned in the press without paying for an advertisement. This is generally called public relations or PR, which I talked about in this aero-new.net podcast which was released today. Traditional promotion includes sending out piles of press releases and pitching story ideas to newspaper and magazine writers. New promotional vehicles such as blogs (hey, you’re reading this now!), eBooks, podcasts and YouTube videos to name a few, have emerged in the last few years.

But what’s more important than the vehicle (the press release or blog article) is the creative spark of genius behind an idea. That’s the fun part, both for the people that created the idea and for the people on the receiving end, particularly if you recognize that these ideas are elusive yet satisfying to create. I thought about writing a separate blog article for each of these ideas, but decided that it would be fun to compare and contrast them. Feel free to add a comment below if you want to mention any creative aviation marketing you’ve seen.

Seaplane Pilots Association
I've always been a fan of seaplanes. They’re fun to watch and even more fun to fly. Of course they also have a practical value in certain markets, such as in Vancouver, British Columbia where they provide regularly scheduled airline service to Victoria and other destinations, and in Alaska where they are de rigueur if you want to get to some locations. On the other hand, they represent a tiny fraction of general aviation and most pilots don’t have much regular exposure to them.

The Seaplane Pilots Association is one of their primary promoters and like other small associations, they have a website and a magazine. But how can you get more people interested in becoming a seaplane pilot or in joining the Seaplane Pilots Association? A common type of advertising is “borrowed interest,” where you leverage something that people are already interested in. The most common example is ads on television and in magazines that use sex in some way to get people’s attention. Regardless of what you think of the practice, it works so companies continue doing it. Sex is used much less frequently to promote general aviation, though for years one of the aviation newspapers distributed free in airport lounges featured a bikini calendar every year which I’m sure increased their paid subscriptions.

On January 20, I received an emailed press release announcing that “USAirways Captain Chelsey Sullenberger was awarded a lifetime membership in the Seaplane Pilots Association in recognition for his extraordinary airmanship, seamanship, and decision-making, saving hundreds of lives in his emergency landing of Flight 1549 in the Hudson River on January 15.” Now that’s clever. Sully is now undoubtedly the most famous seaplane pilot in the world. Why not capitalize on the interest in him to promote becoming a seaplane pilot?

The press release goes on to mention that “Brown's Seaplane Base, in Winter Haven, FL, joined SPA in honoring Sulley with a complimentary seaplane rating course.” Again, what could be more clever than offering a free seaplane rating to the most accomplished unlicensed seaplane pilot? I don’t know how many pilots will decide to get a seaplane rating as a result of this, but I’m sure at least a few will.

Great idea, good press release, but could they have done more? Probably. I haven’t given it a lot of thought, but a few things come to mind. Perhaps a Seaplane Pilots Association officer could have been on one of the cable news shows explaining some of the issues related to making a water landing. The press release might also have included a link to a free eBook on what it takes to get a seaplane rating or to a listing of all of the places that offer seaplane training. It would also be a perfect discussion topic for any of the many aviation podcasts.

Overall, it was a great idea executed in a very traditional way—a press release. There’s still an opportunity for them to continue to push the idea in other ways. By the way, I love the banner at the the top of their website home page which features about a dozen different varieties of seaplanes flying across the banner. Very cool!

Virgin Atlantic
Virgin Atlantic founder Richard Branson also found a way to get some free ink by borrowing interest from the “Miracle on the Hudson” water landing. He was quoted in The New York Daily News as saying "I'd like him to come fly for us," and “We’ll make him the best-paid pilot at Virgin — we’ll give him double [the salary of] anybody else. He also can become one of the astronauts in my intergalactic spaceship company. The man can write his own ticket with me."

While this got some free publicity for Virgin Atlantic–and who could turn down a chance to become an astronaut–the quote smacks a little of “We have lots of money and can buy whatever we’d like.” But I can’t really fault Branson on that for lots of reasons. First, he may not have actually said that, as it’s easy to get misquoted by the press. Second, I can imagine him getting caught up in the moment and being a little boastful. And third, well heck, he is Richard Branson and is accomplished on so many fronts, why shouldn’t he consider hiring the best, regardless of cost?

Colombian Air Force Buying Experimental Aircraft
I did a double take yesterday when a reporter sent me a copy of a Lancair press release announcing that the Colombian Air Force will be buying experimental aircraft to use for primary training. I was surprised because most primary training—military and non-military—is done in certificated aircraft. There’s no reason a flight training organization couldn’t buy a fleet of experimental aircraft for training, it’s just very rare.

But talk about a clever way to generate business in a slow economy! Lancair has always been known for excellence in the engineering of their products. The smooth clean lines of the Cessna 400 evolved from the same minds and hands that created the Lancair experimental aircraft kits that are popular with builders seeking a high performance aircraft. But now they’ve also shown a stroke of genius under the distribution portion of their marketing plan.

Of course, you probably wouldn’t want Air Force cadets to build the aircraft in which they’ll be training, so Lancair has partnered with Colombian-based firms to build the kits into flyable airplanes. I’d have to guess that their cost of labor will be fairly low, which means the Colombian Air Force could ultimately be paying a very reasonable cost for a very high performance training aircraft. That’s a clever solution that resulted in the single largest order for aircraft—25 total—that any kit aircraft manufacturer has ever seen. Hats off to Lancair for pulling together this innovative sale.

Zeppelin Advertising
Anyone who knows me well knows how much I love general aviation. I also enjoy living in Silicon Valley, which is full of innovation, not to mention some of the best weather found anywhere in the world.

So I literally had a grin pop across my face a couple of days ago as I was driving to the Palo Alto airport and I saw “our Zeppelin” lumbering slowly along highway 101. Yes it’s “ours” because it’s unique, it connects us with the rich history of the huge blimp hangers at Moffett Field and it’s rapidly becoming a part of the local fabric. Like the huge hangers that local groups have fought tooth and nail to preserve while the Navy has tried to tear them down, the Zeppelin is becoming an established part of the local culture. We’re not going to let the Navy tear down our beautiful hangers, and we’re darn proud to have the only Zeppelin in North America smiling down on us as it lazily flies sightseers over the San Francisco Bay area.

I spent a few hours with the Zeppelin team at Airship Ventures a few weeks ago and still plan to write a detailed article about this beautiful behemoth. But I couldn’t resist telling you now about their latest marketing coup.

Any company needs to leverage their biggest assets and arguably a 246 foot long Zeppelin is a very big and visible asset. So a couple of weeks ago, it came out of the paint shop (one of the blimp hangers) sporting a new paint job which featured the phone number that you can call to schedule a sightseeing tour aboard the Zeppelin. My guess is that it’s the largest telephone number on display anywhere in the world. And I bet it’s making the phone ring more. Simple, but effective. You got to love great marketing. Oh, one more thing. The phone number is 650-969-8100.

Dumb Idea Department
Let's contrast that with the Dumb Idea department. While pulling up links for these other stories, I ran across an unbelievably stupid business strategy, which has just landed the owners in jail. NBC News is reporting that a 2005 jet crash at Teterboro Airport was due to Platinum Jet over fueling jets to save money. Since the company had a favorable contract at Teterboro, they would tanker fuel around the country so they wouldn’t have to buy it at other more expensive locations. Not only is that stupid, it’s criminal.

So what are the best ideas you’ve seen used to promote general aviation?