In my research of post-pandemic marketing, the larger the company, the slower they’ve been to adapt. While larger companies have the advantage of larger budgets and more staff, smaller companies have always had the advantage when it comes to being nimble.
Consumers are becoming more distrustful of Big Business, and are ignoring–or worse–maligning the typical glossy, perfectly worded, perfectly modeled ads that Big Business loves. Instead, consumers are favoring the real: real people in ads with real diversity, real talk, and real stories. A real understanding of the underlying desires of today’s customers.
Enter Delta Airlines. Huge behemoth $25 billion company that one wouldn’t expect to be among those who truly get what their customers want.
As a Minneapolis-based person who travels for work, Delta is my airline of choice. I’ve been noticing their ads more and more – they line their jet bridges with them, so they’re kind of hard to ignore. I probably weirded out my fellow travelers on my latest trip, because I took photos of Every.Single.Ad.
Each image is what I call a micro-story.
A micro-story reflects a thought, value, or a competitive advantage through an image, short video, or short social media post. It places an idea into your customer’s mind without an overt sales pitch. Stories stick; pitches get ignored.
In this first set of images, behold the beautiful diversity that reflects their worldwide customer base. Different ages, genders, cultures, and colors. In today’s divided United States, they took a stand and included a woman in a hijab. I’m sure some customers wrote nasty letters, but kudos to Delta for showing that everyone is welcome on their airline (unless you’re one of those jerks who end up on a TikTok video for being entitled and rude).
Next, we have a couple hiking, an Asian family enjoying a meal, a child, and a young man of color. Delta is recognizing and normalizing what we all see everyday throughout the world, along with messages of family, simple pleasures, friendly service (note what I take to be a single mom at the door), and a tongue-in-cheek jab at not quite having it all together in life.
In these next ones, they capture the underlying desires of many consumers today: wanting Me Time, seeking customization (Made for You) avoiding FOMO, plus another version of the frazzled jab, this time with a white woman.
I want to call out this last one in particular, because it’s so unique, but Delta didn’t shine a huge, virtue-signaling spotlight on it. In fact, I bet you didn’t even notice it in the second collage above. This woman is missing part of her arm. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen someone like this represented in mainstream corporate advertising. Delta normalized it and didn’t call it out.
I often poke a little fun at Big Business when I speak to audiences about sales and marketing, talking about how small and mid-size businesses have several advantages today.
But I applaud Delta Airlines for being one of the rare huge companies that said YES when they could’ve stayed with the same safe messaging they used pre-pandemic.
One thing though…there used to be an image of a gay couple, but I no longer see it among these other jet bridge images when I travel. I hope Delta didn’t pull that ad because of pressure from the public or their Board. As the mom of an LGBTQ child, it was refreshing to see that represented and normalized as just another part of our society and culture today.
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