By Rick Stanton
Alaska Airlines needs to reintroduce itself to this thing called a brand. Why? The creative for Alaska, in recent memory, has stood for nothing.
Part of the reason is Alaska’s inability—or unwillingness—to see what it has become. Alaska used to be nimble, had better food, understood the value of customer service and treated passengers like they mattered.
Now it’s under siege by Delta, which is winning with what used to be Alaska’s competitive advantages.
What Alaska needs is someone who has the guts to tell them that “their kids are ugly.” Metaphorically speaking, of course. Alaska, listen to someone outside your internal orbit and pay attention when they tell you that you have nothing worth advertising. You’re just another airline today.
Listen when they tell you that no one—not even the late great Bill Bernbach or David Ogilvy—could help you, because you’ve all but lost sight of the consumer experience. And listen when you’re told that you need to find a way back to what you used to be, because that will give the advertising something to talk about—like back in the day when your TV ads were the envy of the market place.
There are, and always have been, a lot of complicated theories about what makes for great creative. And most of those theories are bullshit, based on someone trying to make it sound like they have some sort of secret sauce.
They don’t. Great creative connects at a gut level. It’s emotionally engaging. It makes you think. It makes you sad. It makes you mad. It makes you laugh or smile. It makes you appreciate and like the brand. It really is that simple. Create the like.
But a brand has to give the creatives something honest and tangible to build the stories around. [ I once had a potential client tell me that my job was to make something up because that’s what advertising is about. I walked out of the meeting.]
The last time I flew on Alaska, it was a disaster. And I flew first class. So, before Alaska spends any more money on radio spots talking about how zombies fly for free, it needs to look in the mirror and try and find a way back to what made them different and better.
The old Alaska campaigns were built around a strategy called a category attack. The enemy was everyone else with airplanes, and a good ad pro could extort the hell out of the category’s weaknesses and sameness.
To be successful today, you have to be on an edge: be the cheapest, be the most expensive, whatever, but stand for something. The brands that are getting killed today are in the oblivious middle. Think Sears, J.C. Penney and KMart.
The Alaska brain trust needs to understand that it has to find a way to be different. Again. But they must keep in mind that clients typically get the creative work they deserve.
P.S. Below is one of my favorite Alaska ads, done by Jim Copacino when he was at the former Livingston & Co.. For more, go to You Tube and search Classic Alaska Airline commercials. They truly are “classic.”
