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Airlines: Turn your employees into brand managers

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I flew USAirways last month and had something of an unsettling experience.  Suffice it to say that there was a gate agent in Charlotte with a Hitler complex on a power trip.  Not a good combination.

I have a long, long relationship with USAirways, dating back to when I was a kid and it was called Piedmont.  It's pretty much the only airline that has flown consistently into eastern Tennessee, which is where I have to go when visiting Big Stone Gap, Virginia.  And in my experience, USAirways people have always been at the top of the industry in terms of customer service.

Why is this of any consequence in a blog about brands? 

Right now, each and every airline has a huge opportunity in front of it — the opportunity to make itself seem to be the most vigilant, courteous, professional, customer-loving entity in the air.  Because the airlines have had to cut back the amenities, more than ever they must compete on price, schedules and service.  Which means that their brands will be either polished or tarnished by employee behavior.  For the next two years, the primary point of differentiation between airlines will be employee demeanor.

Like my mother always said when we got less than an A in deportment, your conduct is the easiest thing to do right.  Along these lines, some suggestions for how USAirways — and every other airline — can help their people turn service into a recognizable competitive advantage.

1.  Make sure the people you put on the front lines of customer interaction are equipped to handle it — in terms of exposing criminals as well as dealing with a challenge.  I'm not likely to take someone seriously who is either doing standup [American has one of those in Chicago] or has tailored his uniform to gangsta style.  Come up with a test to expose the employees most likely to lose it with passengers.
2.  Edit the content you share with passengers.  Transparency doesn't mean over-communication, it means precise communication.  Besides telling passengers that a screw is loose on the pilot's flight panel, take the time to explain why you shave 15 minutes off the boarding time and must rush them onto the plane.
3.  Make sure that all your people send the same message, whether it's about what type of carryon is permitted on what type of flight equipment or how happy they are to have us as customers.  Consistency in messages and their deployment is critical to good branding — especially in a service business.
4.  Teach your gate agents to think of their jobs as relationship managers, not cargo movers or g-men.
5.  Remind your gate agents that any negative behavior on their part most likely will fall on the flight attendants, which will then fall on an entire planeload of people.
6.  You have a captive audience in the gate area.  Remind people of the rules — example, why a rolling carryon cannot go on a particular plane — and enforce them across the board.  jetBlue is excellent at this — authoritative without  being abusive.
7.  When you say you're sorry, mean it.  USAirways does this very well.  And I don't mean free vouchers here.

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America the brand

Today, we are expected to have a personal brand, a digital brand, a business brand, a family brand — all for the purpose of aligning our various brands with other brands so that we can all make a bigger footprint and even more money.

God bless America.  The land of the brand and the home of the brazen promoter.

Back before brand and branding became part of everyone's vocabulary, a brand was the thoughtfully-chosen set of verbal and visual symbols that described a product in a way that invited repeated transactions.  Before that, a brand was an identifying mark soldered onto your hide, if you were a steer.  Maybe not a bad idea for those who throw the word around as if they know what they saying.  Just kidding.  Before that, Tennyson referred to Excalibur as King Arthur's brand, in Morte d'Arthur.

That famous poem gives us the dying Arthur asking a knight, Bedivere, to return Excalibur to the lake in which it had been created.  The knight's first impulse was to preserve the sword for posterity — as evidence of Arthur's existence and accomplishments.  Bedivere asked himself,

And if indeed I cast the brand away,
Surely a precious thing, one worthy note,
Should thus be lost forever from the earth,
Which might have pleased the eyes of many men.

It took Bedivere three trips to the lake's shore to summon the will to hurl the sword toward the lake's center.  If there is such a thing as a brand champion [cliche], Bedivere is it.  Farsighted enough to consider Excalibur as a symbol worthy of protection.  Loyal enough to honor his vow to Arthur and to respect the king's wishes.

For Americans today, the only loyalty expected of us is to avoid committing treason.  Unlike Bedivere, our king arthurs are faraway figures who thought and gave on our behalf, leaving us the brand to protect and to honor.

Many of us think of Brand America as our flag, our military might, our borders, our businesses, our landmarks, our prosperity.  We think of our country in terms of its symbols.

I have the great good fortune of knowing people who chose to become American citizens last year.  One of them recently shared a passage from the congratulatory letter he received from the White House; the new citizen shared this as encouragement to others in our circle to consider citizenship.  In reading it, I found what I think is our Excalibur.

“Americans are united across the generations by grand and enduring
ideals. The grandest of these ideals is an unfolding promise that
everyone belongs, that everyone deserves a chance, and that no
insignificant person was ever born. Our country has never been united
by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by principles that move us
beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests, and teach us what
it means to be citizens. Every citizen must uphold these principles.
And every new citizen, by embracing these ideals, makes our country
more, not less, American.”…

We've just begun the season in which we celebrate uniquely American milestones and beliefs.  At the end of this season, we face the task of choosing the successor to a column of leaders, some good, some bad, put at the American helm by our forebears and by us.  Our so-far overcast age has always had one thing going for it:  the fact that any one individual, including the president, is only a part of the American story, not the whole story.  The presidency itself is an esteemed emblem of the American brand as well as a pivotal aspect of self government.  But the person who steps into the role is never the whole story.  We are.

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Transcending coarseness

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It's been a few weeks since my last post.  Work and life have made it pretty impossible to do any thinking, much less writing, about the path to the beautiful brand.

Tonight I can take a moment, at least, to reflect on what I've absorbed in these weeks.

I'm thinking about launching another blog, devoted just to the goings-on here at Technology Mission Control.  The Bay Area.  Silicon Valley.

For example.  Never have I seen so many brilliant people resort to skulduggery just out of sheer competitiveness.  We've got some things going on here that rival the Kremlin
under Brezhnev.  And this is on a volunteer project! 

The only thing I've been able to tell myself is, when I was the same age as these engineers [in their twenties], I had the benefit of reporting to a bunch of what were perceived as old guys who had a heart attack if there was a typo in a slide.  That was a major professional slip — almost an insult to the audience. 

Lucky devils.  They're out on some golf course.

Well, they deserve it.  They taught us a lot.  I learned that even the little things warrant your respect.  Not to mention the big things, like other people.  I cannot imagine what they would be saying about what gets posted on blogs and said in Twitter tweets by people about people with whom they say they're collaborating.

Fairness is a really big deal to me, and I'm getting some wacky emails about the upcoming election.  Which I can address in this blog.  It is about the American brand, afterall. 

I fully expected to see some really funny stuff flying around about the three senators chasing the Presidency.  I didn't expect to learn what names people are willing to call them, just out of fear of the unknown.  How can we have a woman?  How could we have an African American?  How could we have an aging man who might have post traumatic stress disorder?  Forget the sexism and the ageism — that stuff is mild compared to what's going around that is racist.  And the worst part is, when the senders are called on it, they don't even realize they're doing it.  It's unbelievable.

So, on to transcendence.  Out, damned coarseness.  Starting with myself.  Listening.  Breathing deeply, trying not to shock or be shocked.  Hypnosis?  Slow food?  Yoga is too distracting.  Watching an old movie.  Looking at the Golden Gate bridge.  Learning.

One step at a time.

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Defining clutter

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The Unclutterer blog is a useful resource for ways to make life simpler.  It had a post today about a new book that clarifies the relationship between consumption, clutter and health, specifically the issue of weight.

This got me thinking.  Besides the obvious question of what the voracious consumer must do with all the clutter that results from purchases, I’ve come up with my own theory as to why we’ve been so materialistic since the new century began.

You won’t find any blame getting laid strictly at one doorstep here.  Not even Osama bin Laden’s.  Although it’s abundantly clear to me that his actions were the straw that broke the camel’s back.

If we are in fact going to see a change in the way brands must interact with people [see previous post], I think it’s got to do more than address the impact of the Internet.  That heartbreaking day in 2001 triggered a quintessentially American response to pain:  go on with your routine and do the bad guys one better.  Go out and buy or eat something. 

We Americans see some sort of life affirmation in the act of a purchase or a bite of food — moreso than any other culture.  So when the unimaginable happened, instead of letting ourselves feel the depth of the pain — and make the requisite sacrifices consciously — we began to bury ourselves in stuff.  We heightened our pursuit of pedigree, whether that meant clubs, college educations, pre-schools, neighborhoods or physical attributes.  Anything to distract us from the reality that this most blessed nation was despised enough that a deranged gang would try to bring us down — just because we cannot be controlled.

I’m sure the psychology and psychiatry professionals could provide a list of the resulting afflictions.  However, most of us could probably just stand in front of a mirror, look ourselves in the eye and ask if we are really happy or at our personal best when we compare ourselves with the neighbors or eat twelve cookies instead of two.  Twenty minutes after dinner.

More in the next post, especially about how a work project is shedding light on what constitutes clutter.

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Johnny Depp: Three for three

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  • Johnny Depp, the brand:  Puts his talent to serving the character he portrays — authentically.
  • Johnny Depp, the player:  Builds upon his track record — skillfully.
  • Johnny Depp, the startup:  Tries something new with every role [this time, it’s singing] — fearlessly. 

And this morning, he’s nominated for an Academy Award.

Is this just an excuse to make my first post of the new year about Hollywood doings and the very fine movie, Sweeney Todd:  The Demon Barber of Fleet Street?  No.

But I realized as I sat through the movie [eyes shut during the authentic blood spurts] that efforts like Mr Depp’s — as well as the vision of Timothy Burton and the prowess of his entire cast — inject our lives with the artistic version of what every one of us should do and find in our own work.  Not how to get rid of annoying colleagues under the guise of a haircut and a shave or deal with competitors by turning them into pot pies.  I mean how Burton & Co look at their work and how they deliver.

The whole brand thing has been overdone when it comes to personal branding, but there is something to knowing who you are and immersing it in the task at hand.  The personality part — for people and companies — comes to how you choose to build a relationship with your stakeholders. 

In Mr Depp’s case, his stakeholders are diverse.  The camera, the scriptwriter, the composer, the director, the cast, the audience.  When you go for the truth, it’s much easier to perform — and the more you find new ways to convey the truth, the more powerful the message for all the stakeholders.

Many experts would say that players and startups have a long way to go, as groups, with striking upon a true brand for themselves.  Let’s say those experts are correct.  Seems to me the one thing that bears trying is learning from each other.

For players, it would be shedding the years of tired, cliche marketing to get back to the original idea behind the company.  For startups, it’s realizing that the patina of experience and being part of the system doesn’t have to mean old or old school.

For both, it is recognizing that brands begin with the desire to create something that works for the organization and for the community — and they end when things start getting phony, lazy, complacent or too expensive.

The next time you go to the movies and feel that the exorbitant ticket price was completely justified, think about the factors that made it so.  Those very same elements have parallels in every other kind of business, not just "the pictures."  A desire to dedicate oneself to the story and its characters.  An interest in community, not just quarterly stats and whipping the competition.  The capacity to innovate and act like a startup every day.

A leader that has the talent and focus of Johnny Depp?  Couldn’t hurt.