Skift CMO Interviews: JetBlue's Biggest Challenge Is to Keep Being Cool
Skift Take
JetBlue doesn't use influencers to promote its brand except in scattered countries where the airline isn't well-known. Who needs influencers when word-of-mouth and your own passengers spread the good vibes?
Editor's Note: Following our previous CEO interview series in online travel, hospitality, and destinations, Skift has launched a new series, this time focused on Chief Marketing Officers.
To better understand the big marketing challenges facing travel brands in an age when consumers are in control, Skift's What Keeps CMOs Up at Night will talk with the leading voices in global marketing from across all the industry's sectors.
These interviews with leaders of hotels, airlines, tourism boards, digital players, agents, tour operators and more will explore both shared and unique challenges they are facing, where they get insights, and how they best leverage digital insights to make smarter decisions.
This is the latest interview in the series.
Marty St. George, JetBlue's executive vice president of commercial and planning, is a big fan of a certain Boston-area NFL team. Which may be why he quips that Southwest Airlines' pervasive TV commercials on Sundays "ruined football for me."
JetBlue does local TV advertising because it isn't a national brand and some two-thirds of its advertising budget goes to digital marketing. "The beauty of digital is it is made for test and target," St. George says. "The whole concept is you throw it all out there. You make the best media plan you can come up with."
Interviewed at JetBlue headquarters within a week or so of Alaska Airlines announcing an acquisition of Virgin America, which JetBlue had eyes for, St. George discussed JetBlue's biggest challenge (remaining a cool brand in the perception of the public), why the airline doesn't need influencers and related marketing topics.
Skift: In terms of JetBlue's marketing, what keeps you up at night?
Marty St. George: What keeps me up at night? It is funny, this is the type of place where normally you get one of those canned interview answers, like when someone asks your weaknesses, you say, "I work too hard. I care too much," but I'll tell you what really keeps me up at night. It actually goes back to 10 years ago, when I first came here.
When I was interviewing, actually with the CEO and president at the time, and they asked me what I was most afraid of with the job and I said ... I had just finished one of the Malcolm Gladwell books and it told the story about Hush Puppies. One of the things in the Hush Puppies story was that New York was a city that loves fads, and fads come in and fads go out, and I said, "I just want to make sure that Jet
