My Airline Blogs Have Been Grounded
Whenever I tell someone that I own and manage a PR firm, the response is almost always the same: “Wow, that must be great being the boss and getting to do whatever you want.” Their visions of me taking extended vacations and enjoying the stress-free existence that comes with not having to report to someone sounds good, but is hardly the case.
Owning your own company, particularly if it’s a professional services business, is just a more glamorous form of indentured servitude. You are forever beholden to clients, with their needs and deadline pressures taking precedence over yours (and rightfully so, just so we are clear). Planning an all-day hike on Saturday only to have a client call you the Friday afternoon to say they need a news release drafted and approved by 9 a.m. Monday morning? The mountain will be there next weekend. Booked on a little R&R trip to Florida in January only to find the day before that a client in Minneapolis wants to see you? Swap the scuba flippers in your suitcase for snow boots, as you’re going to Minnesota.
But clients aren’t the only ones ruling the roost. There are also your employees. It’s often said that in a professional services business, a company’s best assets walk out the door every night. At a top-tier firm like S&A, these “assets” are aggressively courted by other firms on a regular basis and understandably so as I’ve surrounded myself with some of the best and brightest people in the public relations business. To keep these people happy I’ve had to embrace what is known as employee empowerment, meaning that I must often listen and accept the collective will of my colleagues, even when it involves the trampling of my First Amendment right of free speech. Harrumph!
When we launched this blog in June, it was generally assumed by the As in S&A that I would focus on public relations, reputation management, customer service, and media relations, topics on which I can speak with a great degree of authority and expertise. All things considered, it was a reasonable assumption. I’ll give them that. However, I do have interests outside the four walls of the office that I would like to write about from time to time. One of them is the airline industry… which I guess is apparent to even the most sporadic of readers by now.
I have been fascinated with the business since I flew on a Vickers Viscount turboprop to Pittsburgh when I was about 10 years old. The logistics of moving all those people and all that cargo to so many places… it’s like watching a symphony on tarmac. Truthfully, I secretly covet the job of Henry Joyner, the American Airlines executive whose myriad responsibilities include overseeing the nation’s biggest airliner fleet. Then again, I get pretty stressed out wondering if we turned off the air conditioner at night. I’m not sure I have that inner zen tranquility required to masterfully juggle more than 4,000 daily flights without causing myself irreparable cardiac stress.
Given this childhood-born fascination still entrenched, is it any wonder I started writing about the airline business? It started with a blog about call centers and then I moved on to Virgin America. Okay, maybe Virgin America IV was a little much, but, hey, Sir Richard Branson is a PR guru so I figured I was on solid ground. I’ll concede that my blog about relieving airport congestion was hardly within the realm of PR, but I fly a lot and I’m fed up with increasingly long delays. But if you hold these airline posts up to the light at just the right angle, there are PR considerations touched on. The post about airline frequent flyer programs earlier this week, for example, should technically be considered within the realm of customer service, which is PR-ish, right?
Unfortunately, my colleagues see things otherwise and have plotted against me.
The mutiny – or intervention depending on where your sympathies lie on this one – began with my co-founder Jackie, who has the final say over all editorial content emanating out of S&A, including this very post. She let me know early on that she, well, let’s just say “disapproved” of my steady stream of airline blogs, especially when I became a tad fixated on criticizing the airline connected with Sir Richard Branson, a guy with a solid invite on her Five Famous People You’d Invite to Dinner list.
Then there is Jeff, who in another life specialized in travel PR and has probably forgotten more about the travel industry than most people know. Jeff, too, has let me know of his concern over the frequency of my airline blogs and graciously has sent me links to people more qualified than me to write about the business. Anthony has repeatedly made references about getting me help for my “airline blog addiction.” Meghann? Well, she now just meets my requests for help on airline-related research with the glazed-over look of defeat and resignation. The final straw came from Jacob, our creative director, who when I asked to post my Virgin America IV posting, groaned: “Not another airline blog. I thought you were supposed to be writing about public relations.”
Threatened with having my blog hijacked and off-loaded to a secret URL, I had no choice but to meet their demands for a six-month blackout on anything airline-related. These were the terms in their ransom note:
“For purposes of the S&A blog, you are not to directly or indirectly write about, write on, or write around anything having to do with the airline industry, which is defined as any person, organization or group involved for pay or pleasure in activities that enable, support, market, or provide commentary on the transporting of people or cargo via the air.”
Not completely heartless, they granted me an exception: “You may, however, write about helium balloons.”
So there you have it. Employee empowerment at its finest. As I am a man of my word and, all kidding aside, this is very much a joint effort, I must now wait until April before indulging my editorial whimsy for all that is glorious and maddening about airplanes and the people and companies that fly them.
Before I am silenced, however, I want to give a shout out to an airline blog that is amazingly informative and a delight to read. Called The Cranky Flyer, it’s written by a former airline employee and self-confessed “airline dork” named Brett Snyder. What impresses me about the site is not only Brett’s insightful musings, but the sophisticated responses of his readers. Brett is an extremely talented writer with a wry sense of humor; his numerous awards are well deserved.
I’ve had several email exchanges and brief telephone conversation with Brett these past few weeks and he’s offered to take me to a bar/restaurant at LAX with a bird’s-eye view of planes landing and taking off the next time I’m in town. For me that will be the equivalent of sitting with Bob Sheppard while watching the Yankees play. Sadly, I won’t be able to write about the experience if it happens before the winter snow comes and goes.
Then again, I guess I won’t be able to write about that unbelievably wonderful Virgin America flight I took this morning or about the senior Virgin America executive who has agreed to meet with me. Hmmmm… you sure you don’t want to renegotiate, Jackie?
And with that, off I go into the sunset. Wheels up.