Effective messaging: One poke in the eye, one not

It is virtually a truism that a great deal of what solidifies corporate images among stakeholders are their perceptions of what is true or factual or real. However, what is not always acknowledged among communicators is that what constituents believe to be true, factual or real may differ from actual empirical facts.

Therefore, to get your money’s worth when executing communications campaigns, it is very important to view corporate message from the perspective of the end-user, the stakeholder.

An examination of two general aviation companies provides a dramatic contrast in approaches, the visceral versus the thoughtful.

The companies are Cessna [see earlier post] and Hawker Beechcraft.

Their common objective is to prove the efficacy of corporate aviation, overcome public and Congressional outrage over high-flying fat cat executives, and to staunch declining aircraft sales.

Cessna’s pokes Congress in the eye in its appeal to CEO machismo when it says, "true visionaries will continue to fly." The headline virtually hammers the board table when it shouts, “Timidity didn’t get you this far.” These messages sit above a gleaming Cessna jet aggressively poised to thunder into a threateningly black sky.

By contrast, Hawker Beechcraft ads don’t feature an executive jet, but the workhorse nine-passenger turboprop Beechcraft King Air 350. The message is clear: this is a business tool, not an executive luxury.

Instead of a damn the criticism, man, fly anyway approach, Beechcraft provides an easily understood example of how business efficiency is achieved by Starbucks’ use of its aircraft as prudent, cost-effective business tools.

The ad says, “Starbucks is a uniquely American success story with thousands of locations in more than 40 countries. Like most successful corporations, Starbucks relies on business aircraft to manage and grow its business worldwide. We are here to help them fly even more efficiently than before by showing them how to right-size their flight department.”

"You can debate the size and amenities,” Hawker Beechcraft CEO James E. Schuster said. “But that doesn't negate the basic economic premise of the value of business aircraft to many, many companies."

(USA Today reports that The National Business Aviation Association says that 86% of those on board corporate planes are non-executive employees, such as sales people, technical experts or repairmen doing jobs more quickly in difficult locations that don’t lend themselves to regularly scheduled commercial flights.)

CEO Schuster added that the choice of executive aviation should be "function of the cost of their time," not their egos. "What makes a business competitive [is] getting the most out of the people it employs" and prudent use of corporate aviation is one way to achieve this legitimate business goal.

Links to Hawker Beechcraft, Cessna and the USA Today story.

Cessna's corporate blind spot: "Who, me worry?"

Cessna simply does not get it.

That the public and the media pilloried CEO’s of Detroit’s Big Three automakers for flying hugely expensive corporate jets to DC so that they could personally beg Congress for billions of taxpayer dollars was less about the private aviation and more about executive judgment.

When the nation, and indeed the world, is experiencing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression 70 years ago, and the auto companies are losing tens of millions of dollars daily, fiscal excess in any form is the last thing they should exhibit to stakeholders.

Yet Cessna’s “Rise” ad and PR campaign debuted in The Wall Street Journal and other business and trade publications this week. And the “Rise” challenge to executives plays not to their fiscal prudence and thoughtful and prescient management, but to unvarnished ego and raw machismo.

One segment of the Cessna ad reads: "One thing is certain: True visionaries will continue to fly. Because in tempestuous times, leaders recognize it's not about ego. Or artifice. It's simply about availing yourself of the full range of tools to do your job.”

By denouncing ego, Cessna is in fact catering to it, just through the back door.

"Timidity didn't get you this far,” the Cessna ad states. “Why put it in your business plan now? In today's corporate world, pity the executive who blinks."

Explaining why he approved the campaign’s lead ad, Cessna CEO and president Jack Pelton told Ad Age, "It's time for the other side of the story to be told" referring to the denunciation the Big Three got for their beggars’ fly-in.

And corporate communication VP Robert Stangarone so eloquently supported his boss saying, "We have a big dog in this fight. We feel like we must take a stand."

No one at Cessna, or their ad agency, seems to understand. Wise use of private aviation by corporations is widely accepted as good business and financial policy, when done properly:

• When executives regularly visit multiple clients in geographically dispersed areas over short periods of time; 
  
• When a corporate shuttle is a more cost efficient way to move employees regularly among multiple facilities than high cost, last minute commercial tickets;
  
• When CEO safety is a concern.
  

Lots of valid reasons justifying private aviation can be made, but Cessna did not make them. Therefore, we must conclude that Cessna did not make a valid case because it does not understand the practical business and public relations issues at hand.

It was much easier for Cessna to reach for the corporate jugular, and challenge CEOs with the implied question of what sort of weak-kneed, indecisive sissy executive are your to give up your magic carpet of privilege!

This insensitivity to stakeholder reaction — a not unjustified reaction — is the kind of behavior that diminishes public confidence in “big business” and leads to public outcry for increased regulation. Too bad Cessna is only adding fuel to the fire.

[Read the full Cessna campaign story in the Ad Age online edition.]