Passengers in starched suits. Stewardesses in hats and heels. On-board piano bars.
Everyone knows air travel used to be glamorous. But decades later, leading airlines seem to be more concerned with who can offer the most stripped back service for the lowest price than who can provide the best experience. Sure, air travel is safer now, and flight attendants don’t need to wear stilettos for their passengers to have a pleasant journey. But why is flying no longer an experience?
In 2000, JetBlue realised that travel was missing the personal touch. What used to be as exciting as the holiday itself had become as fun as going on a rail replacement bus. So they set out to fix this by creating a new transatlantic airline, using blue ocean strategy (focusing on both differentiation and low cost) to provide flights that excite without breaking the bank. And, judging by their huge success over the last 23 years, their execution was spot on.
It’s rare to see a truly disruptive business, especially in an industry as rigid as aviation. So to get the inside scoop on JetBlue's story of growth, innovation, and purpose, we spoke to Maja Gedosev, JetBlue's general manager for Europe, about how they created their own blue ocean. As you’ll see, the business has nailed the four Ps of marketing, making it the perfect framework to explore their success.
Product:
It all started with the product. Transatlantic flight paths had been monopolised by big carriers, who charged a lot but neglected to innovate, for the best part of a century. As such, there was an unexplored space in the market: for flights that go above and beyond the journey without breaking the bank.
JetBlue wanted to develop a holistic understanding of what customers felt existing flights were missing, and they undertook four to five years of intensive research to do so. Based on their findings, everything about the in-flight experience needed to change, starting with the planes themselves. The foundation for this was moving away from wide body aircrafts, popular for their higher capacity, and instead opting for narrow body single aisle planes. ‘It's a private jet feeling,’ says Maja. ‘You board and deboard these flights very quickly. And the idea is that the crew members on board actually have time to dedicate and devote themselves fully to the customer experience.’
This decision also enabled them to level-up their business class offering, which they’ve rebranded as their ‘Mint Experience’. Mint Experience cabins feature private rooms with sliding doors, and design elements more akin to a gentlemen's club than a commercial plane — certainly a superior set-up compared to the average business class trip, for which you pay double the price for a leather chair and not much else.
You can tell that making these structural changes to airframes isn’t easy based on the fact that every other airline uses the same planes with the same default layouts, give or take a branded upholstery change. So how did JetBlue make it happen?
After exploring their plans, Airbus recognised that JetBlue's proposition presented an excellent opportunity to elevate their existing planes, and were keen to develop the new airframe for them — and subsequently for their competitors. ‘I think following our order of this aircraft, there were many other airlines that followed,’ says Maja. And with good reason.
‘[The Airbus 321] is very much the aircraft of the current times. I mean, we live in a world where sustainability is number one. The environmental impact is critical for corporates, but also for individuals. The young generations are looking for the aircraft that’s going to actually care for the environment. And this type of aircraft is actually answering all those questions.’
This mindset of fastidiously meeting every customer need extends across all aspects of JetBlue's service, from being the first airline to offer free Wi-Fi as standard, to allowing passengers to build their own meal from a menu of healthy choices, rather than just the usual ‘Chicken or beef?’
The level of thoughtful detail packed into each JetBlue flight is extraordinary, and too numerous to list here without sounding sponsored. But Maja and the wider JetBlue team’s passion shines through into the product they’ve produced, and it’s clear that putting yourself in your customers’ shoes to determine how to serve them better is a strategy that works.
And their pricing model doesn’t hurt, either…
Price:
With a business class return trip on a transatlantic flight costing as much as $15,000, there was an obvious opportunity to offer the same service with a less eye-watering price tag. ‘We entered the UK market with 70% lower fares in our Mint Experience cabin than what the competition offered. The same goes in our economy cabin where we offered fantastic product and experience elements, but for about 20% to 30% lower fares.’
But all these next-level experiences sound expensive. How does JetBlue manage to balance the age-old dilemma of cost versus price?
The answer is value leadership — JetBlue's own blue ocean. Rather than focusing on offering the lowest fares or the most ostentatious luxury experience possible as competitors do, they want customers to feel like they’ve got the best possible value for their money.
Central to this is focusing on getting maximum ROI from every outgoing. ‘We make sure that our costs are efficiently managed, we make sure that what we put in has high value and that low cost. There are businesses out there that we partner with that have the same philosophy as we do.’
Every JetBlue operation across the business is aligned with its blue ocean strategy: focused on differentiation while keeping costs down and providing high value simultaneously — and their partners are held to the same high standards.
‘We are good at selecting the right partners at the right value as well. I won’t say that we’re looking to create the product cheap. We’re creating a quality product, but it’s the partners that usually you won’t find already being in the industry recognized or used by other competitors.’
JetBlue is particularly proud of its partnerships with family-run, minority-run, and female-run small businesses — another big win with the ESG-conscious millennial audience.
‘We want to give an opportunity, a voice, a platform to those that really are eager and want to work with us,’ says Maja. And these partnerships have been a natural process for the business. For example, the time their CEO sat next to the founder of a fledgling snack company on a flight by chance. One minute she was offering him a cookie, the next minute he was offering her a contract to bake for 44 million jetBlue customers.
By establishing partnerships with lesser known brands, JetBlue can offer a premium product without the price tag of the well-established equivalents, all while boosting their profile as a thoughtful, socially-conscious enterprise at the same time. And the best part? The snacks are free!
We’ve all experienced budget airlines baiting you with a low fare, then piling on the extras. (Want access to the emergency slide in the event of a crash? That’ll be £45 extra, please.) But JetBlue does away with this mentality, with an inclusive fare that gives you the full experience in one package, from your seat and stowed luggage to snacks. If a customer wants to add another bag, or upgrade to a seat with even more leg room, the option is there for them to do so, but everything they need is already there. As it should be, frankly.
This combination of perfected product and price is just one part of JetBlue's success story. We’re lucky enough to have Maja back for next week’s episode of Unicorny, where we’ll dive deeper into the nuts and bolts of JetBlue's blue ocean strategy across the arenas of promotion, place, and beyond — digital marketers, you’re not going to want to miss it.
Listen: To uncover the full extent of JetBlue's in-flight innovation, listen to the podcast here: Value Innovation in Action: JetBlue Ocean Strategy
Got a burning question about JetBlue's success? Record them here for the chance to have them answered in a future episode.
