Everything about JWT's new "Jetting" campaign repels me. It's clever all right. Almost as clever as the Virgin Atlantic campaign that preceded it by about five years. Jet Blue copies that campaign in just about every way imaginable. It seems the only way they livened up "Go Jet Set Go," in fact, is that they changed Virgin's red to Jet Blue's blue.
Almost fifty years ago, when Avis made hay by triumphantly proclaiming itself #2, Carl Ally, the agency for Hertz ran an ad that did not merely copy the tone of Avis'. It said: “We have a competitor who says he’s No. 2. That’s hard to argue with.”
In other words, they fought originality with obstinance and originality. Not just me-too-ism.
4 comments:
Funny- the first thing that hit me about your comparison was that in the days of Hertz & Avis the media landscape was such that most consumers actually saw the respective Hertz and Avis ads.
Not sure how many flyers will actually see the Jet Blue "Jetting" campaign.
Check out their homepage- jetblue.com- which is the one point of interaction many (if not most) consumers will have with them. It mentions something about "Jetting" in passing, but given that the airline is called "Jet Blue" I wonder how many will even notice. The site itself is not particularly user friendly: if I want to fly out of NYC, I have to select one of the 3 airports - I can't have it show me flights from all 3 so that I can select the cheapest/best time/etc. (That's a very useful function and is present in sites like Kayak.com)
So already they're losing me.
Brands need to think about how and where consumers find them and if that experience matches the experience promised in the advertising.
If it doesn't, they're screwed.
(You know, I feel a post coming on.)
and what Avis managed in the process was to sort of make it a fight the two, rather than a host 3-4 or so.
Which is, to toad's point, made even harder today in a world that is so totally fragmented. Which of course means you have to learn how to concentrate, rather than spreading yourself thinner and thinner.
And make sure your site works. Really works. The best campaign will die a quick and sudden death on a crap site.
and what Avis managed in the process was to sort of make it a fight the two, rather than a host 3-4 or so.
Which is, to toad's point, made even harder today in a world that is so totally fragmented. Which of course means you have to learn how to concentrate, rather than spreading yourself thinner and thinner.
And make sure your site works. Really works. The best campaign will die a quick and sudden death on a crap site.
I still love Jet Blue, so I hope they change their course and pull through...Dr. Tantillo posted on them on his branding blog again today (http://blog.marketingdoctor.tv/2008/05/14/jetblue-again.aspx) - apparently a passenger was asked to sit in the lavatory so that an off-duty flight attendant could have his seat...I'm not quite ready to swallow it, though.
It's funny how you reference this Avis ad, since they've just come out with those snazzy ads which--again according to Dr. Tantillo ('the marketing doctor'), will actually only hurt their brand, since they undercut what should be one of Avis' core brand points: reliability/dependability. Here's that post: http://blog.marketingdoctor.tv/2008/05/08/tantillos-branding-bite-avis-ads-a-big-branding-mistake.aspx
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