Monday, July 28, 2008

THE AIRLINES - GOOGLE'S LEAST LIKELY EVOLUTIONARY RIVAL

As commodities, heavily price driven US airline brands are going the way of the old Greyhound Bus Lines and dodo bird. What needs are actually served by physical travel save sentiment? If an airline's overhead is so great that it cannot sustain itself, then what should or could an airline become without its hardware and overhead...and what prescient Chairman or CEO is asking this question? With baggage fees bringing in no more than beer money airline marketing seems missing in action. Sure airlines stand for travel, but what does travel stand for? Communication? Enrichment? and how can that be served by communication without travel? Who would be the first airline to compete with Google? And how unlikely would that be? With the first chinks appearing in Google's armour, could an airline remold itself into the next travel/search/communication engine? Is it more likely that this new business entity replace the Face Book? And with a slight twist of wrist revolutionize social marketing and networking? And how would that occur? Where are the Special User Effects that are the underpinnings of great unique selling propositions? (like the identification of 'development' that took Pampers $1.6 billion in annual sales beyond 'fit' and 'dryness') Where are the reasons to try an airline, and if I try it and like it to fly it again? When the industry needs direction most Madison Avenue too seems MIA. Awareness and recognition pap like Fly the friendly skies isn't going to cut the mustard here or impact consumer habits and practices. There is a clear need now for a market share war and not based on price. Two things, 1) when you talk price it spooks those already facing shaky personal and professional budgets; 2) when you talk price (like Chrysler's $2.99 a gallon gas promotion) your brand equity sinks so low you have to climb up a ladder to get to the bottom. Christ! Sell your cars based on their substantiated reason's for being. Cars, airlines = modes of transportation = for business or pleasure. Tell me something I don't know. That's what the brand doctor orders here!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Great information!
For more information I use http://www.CompareAirlineFees.com and their Airline Fee Comparison Tool to compare airlinefees & flight prices to find the 'true' best ticket price.

Anonymous said...

You guys need to relax your blog, so many absurd animations I feel like I'm at a rave.

H. Martin Calle said...

I appreciate your comment and you are probably right. But my blog started as a replacement for all the notes I used to scratch out on slips and tears of paper which I later lost. This is just my place so I pretty much do what I please to please me. I don't even try to please anyone else...but on the other hand, if I can just please 2 out of every ten people that comes here most companies would make me their president.