Re: How to market a flat subject?

From: Keith Lacy <keithl_at_vistatec.ie>
Date: Thu 26 Jul 2001 11:46:06 -0500

NICKI MANSFIELD <Nicki_Mansfield_at_StandardAero.ca> WROTE:

> I work for a worldwide group of aerospace companies
> and have been tasked with coming up with innovative
> ways to sell our products and increase general
> awareness of our group of companies. We design and
> manufacture aircraft wheels and brakes, heat exchangers,
> rubber seals and de-icing equipment and we also repair,
> maintain and overhaul aircraft engines. Pretty flat
> stuff, hey?

Woah ! lots of questions here. Ok couple of the main
points as I see them, you are selling a product/service
B2B, so unfortunately B2B and unsexy go hand in hand
(more often than not anyway). There are a couple of
ways to make a product, you can go for a rational
approach versus an emotional approach. An emotional
approach works best for consumer marketing where you
can build up an image around the product with sexy
marketing, a brand so to speak, basically branding
comes into it's own when there is little tangible
difference your product and the next. With B2B your
immediate market, I would imagine, couldn't care less
whether your products have a sexy image or not. You're
marketing aircraft components, pretty serious stuff,
so I think you need a pretty serious approach. The
buyers of these components, I think, will want to know
that your brakes are going to stop the aircraft better
than the competiton etc.. In essence you want to put
yourself in the shoes of aircraft manufacturers and
think if that was me buying brakes for my planes what
would be important to me. I think you'll find that what
they are looking for is the best product fit for the
purpose for which it was intended. They'll probably
want to know that they are the best product out there,
that they are durable, that they are quality, require
little maintenance, that they are not going to let you
down. So these are the things that you want to
emphasise.

Sure you can use a bit of slick marketing but I think
it would be prudent to use marketing to accentuate the
product benefits that you think are going to be
important to buyers, rather than a 'these brakes will
make sure you have the coolest plane on the block....'
approach. If you think that there are a lot of similar
companies out there hawking the same products/services,
think about how you can distance yourself from them but
be sure to base it on real benefits not just slick
marketing alone.

As for targeting the end user, aircraft passengers,
that really is a tricky one. Yes successfully targeting
the end user has been done before (Intel most notably,
but also car part manufacturers I guess) but this is a
bit different. Again you've got to think from their
perspective, what's in it for them. Do they care?
I think you'll find that they don't, anyway even if
consumers did care what tyres the aircraft they are
travelling on is equipped with - how are they going to
check it out? And what if it is not their preferred
brand, will they get off the flight? You'd have to
be quite careful not to get involved in scaremongering,
I think aircraft safety is quite a touchy subject.
Targeting the end user here I'd say is a no no.
Just my opinion.....

Keith Lacy
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Received on Thu Jul 26 2001 - 11:46:06 CDT