16 WINGS | March/April 2015 WWW.WINGSMAGAZINE.COMPHOTO: CANADA JETLINEST
he New Year promises to
be an interesting one for
Canadian airlines. The two
majors, WestJet and Air
Canada, are coming off suc-
cessful years, with high load factors and
happy shareholders. It was such a good
year in 2014, in fact, that at least two dif-
ferent groups (Canada Jetlines and Jet
Naked) announced they are on the hunt
for the capitol required to provide Cana-
dians with the option of an ultra-low cost
carrier (ULCC) flight experience, staking
out the bottom of the market. I would have
thought, however, that the “ultra-low cost”
crowd had already been hovered across
the border by the lure of dirt-cheap flights
on antique aircraft.
At the 2014 Aircraft Interiors Expo in
Seattle, Mark Krolick, managing direc-
tor of United Airlines’ Marketing and
Product Development division, talked
about the challenges in melding United
and Continental into one airline and cre-
ating a common brand image out of that
amalgamation.
It’s not a simple process for those of
you who recall the Air Canada/Canadian
shotgun marriage. Krolick spoke about
the importance of understanding who his
company’s potential customers are and
building its brand and marketing pro-
grams around this perspective. He used
examples of Starbucks and Dunkin’ Do-
nuts to illustrate that if you are marketing
yourself to the wrong crowd, it’s just not
going to happen. United (and the other
U.S. airlines) are marketing themselves
as two class entities, economy and busi-
ness-class. Except for a small number of
routes, the premium first class base is just
too small and they aren’t going after it.
Around the world, first class is becoming
an endangered species, with most airlines
relying on business and economy.
Brand loyalty is certainly an interesting
concept. It’s all about creating an image
that consumers can identify with and
more importantly, want to be identified
with. Understanding customer values
isn’t a simple process, because the reality
is that many of us aren’t too sure what we
really like or even why we like it. I had my
introduction to marketing more than 40
years ago just after my first brush withhigher education (criminology if you’re
keeping score). A friend and I spent one
or two evenings a week over the summer
helping his mother run marketing surveys
on the subject of beer. Her company had
been retained by one of the national brew-
ers to conduct surveys aimed at a specific
demographic – males in their early 20s. A
group of suitable subjects were assembled
in a meeting room and asked to sample
four different bottles of beer and rate each
on a scorecard, with no hint as to which
company was conducting the survey. The
samples had no labels or other identifiers
other than a number. Three of the samples
were the same beer (but from breweries
in three different cities) from the spon-
sor and the fourth sample was from their
main competitor, as a control. My friend
and I had the job of disseminating and
collecting the samples and the score
sheets, straightening up the room after-
wards and disposing of the unused beer at
the end of the session (nobody said it was
going to be easy!).
The first thing our test subjects were
asked to do was to write the name of their
favourite beer at the top of their scorecard
before the tasting began and about two-
thirds would write down the sponsor’sproduct. The fun part oc-
curred when we tallied up
the scores at the end of the
session and, without fail,
the “winner” in every ses-
sion was the competitor’s
product. So, what happened after that?
We didn’t tell the tasters that most of
them were drinking the “wrong” beer and
I’ve no idea what happened at head office
when they got the news. As of January
2015, the same two beers are still on the
shelves across the country, first and sec-
ond in sales nationally, just as they were
back in the summer of 1974.
What does this have to do with the air-
line business? If you’re still drinking the
same beer you were in 1974, you’re pay-
ing almost seven times what you were for
a dozen back then. Equate that to flying,
and a Vancouver-Toronto route is about
two-and-a-half times the price what it
was back then. Today, microbreweries are
taking on the factory breweries and hav-
ing a significant impact on the market,
not by offering cheaper products, but by
offering a wider range of products that
can appeal to market segments the fac-
tory breweries can’t hope to reach. And
while microbreweries have a strong fu-
ture, I can’t help but think that trying to
start an ultra-cheap airline in Canada will
leave someone crying in their beer. | WWill ULCC brands fly in Canada?
Thirsting for a niche could leave new players crying in their beer
GLIDE
PATH
By Paul Dixon|
Paul Dixon is freelance writer and
photojournalist living in Vancouver.It’s not a simple process for those
of you who recall the Air Canada/
Canadian shotgun marriage.