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Cessna Business Aviation Campaign
With all the controversy around private jets lately, and the huge drop in orders for business jets in the  last several months, the fact that Cessna decided to launch a new advertising campaign isn’t all that surprising. What is surprising is the message they decided to use, which is essentially: have some balls and use a corporate jet. Huh???
Cessna made a mistake focusing on bravado and courage instead of productivity and economy in its advertising. That would be true in any economy but is painfully true in the one we’re suffering through right now. Interestingly, the Cessna press release announcing the campaign talks about the productivity benefits of business aviation and does a better job of getting that message across than the creative of the ad does.
I got my pilot’s license a few months ago and am obviously a huge fan of flying and private aviation. I also happen to believe owning or chartering a private plane can be a smart business tool in many cases. Sure, they are overused as executive perks in many companies where the executives’ performance hardly justifies any perks, and that should stop. And Citicorp was apparently living on another planet that is ruled by morons when they decided recently it made sense to add a $50 M jet to their fleet after receiving tens of billions of dollars in bailout money. But private aviation can be a significant time saver and productivity booster, not to mention a safety and security tool for [some] high profile/high target execs.
- Imagine the CEO of a manufacturing company who has to fly commercial every time he needs to visit one of his 10 plants that are located across the country, in rural areas, hours from a major airport?
- Imagine the group of 10 execs flying to a meeting that takes them 8 hours, requires changing planes and a layover, and costs $1,500/ticket flying commercial coach compared to that same trip that costs $15,000 for the group on a chartered private plane and takes 3 hours instead because they can fly direct?
- Imagine the cost of time wasted flying commercial for an exec making $2 M a year who can’t work on the plane because his seatmate can see everything he does, even in first class on many flights. $2 M a year, assuming a 60 hour work week, works out to almost $650/hour. At that rate, flying just 20 hours/month works out to more than $150K in lost productivity, and that’s not counting all the additional hours spent waiting for flights, flight delays, and all the extra time people spend getting through security and walking to that departure gate that’s 2 concourses away when flying commercial.
Message to Cessna: right idea, wrong message. What were you thinking?
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