A great friend of mine works for Jet Blue, a budget airline in the USA. In September they ran a sensational special offer. For a flat USD $599 passengers enjoyed unlimited travel anywhere in the Jet Blue network for the entire month. Wow, what a bargain. Most airlines wouldn’t be brave enough to make an offer like this, but I am sure the entire industry stood up and took notice when Jet Blue announced it.
Now when you think about it from JetBlue’s point of view they sold hundreds of thousands of their “All You Can Jet” tickets, generating millions of dollars in upfront revenue and they got enormous word of mouth publicity from their offer. And lets not forget the customers, those lucky enough to get the $599 tickets have a sensational deal. The perfect win/win scenario that is the stuff that legendary businesses are made of.
To make an offer like this you need to be brave and smart. I am sure that the team at Jet Blue are both. In these challenging times it is really the brave and the bold who often get the most amazing results. We need to be smart enough to think up new ideas and be brave enough to give them a go. Interestingly enough Jet Blue entered the North American market when all experts said there was no room for another budget airline. They have been consistently profitable, even in the midst of the GFC. We can all learn a lot from them and other similar brave and bold companies around the world.
Now is the time to throw out what doesn’t work and it is a time to try ideas that may be considered a little unorthodox. The best part of the modern business landscape is that if you can come up with a great idea, that is a little out of the box, and you are brave enough to give it a go, the power of social media will kick in and word of mouth marketing will spread your idea like wildfire.
Never before has there been a time that consumers are screaming for new things to buy and new ways to spend their money. Even in the midst of tough times, the new they are looking for is value. Offer this however you can and they will support you, even if it means buying more upfront to save over the long term. Another perfect example of this is Costco – the new discount supermarket in Australia. You can save a motza but you have to pay a membership fee and be prepared to buy toilet paper in lots of 100.
The lesson here is that fortune favours the brave, so be brave in your business. Be bold. If you try an idea and it doesn’t work, it’s not a failure it just means you are one step to closer to an amazing idea that generates a lot of money for your business, so keep trying.
0 thoughts on “Sometimes we just have to be a little brave…”