As I was reading through the most recent issue of BusinessWeek, I noticed a pretty sharp contrast in the approach taken by the airlines advertising therein. So, I thought it would be fun to put them all up next to each other and see what we can make of them. I went back a few issues to see what other ads have appeared lately, and came up with seven ads over the past month or so (just in BusinessWeek).

Take a quick look at the following 7 advertisements. Spend about a second or two looking at each one (if you click on an ad, a larger one will open up in a different window). Ready? Go:

So, what do you think? Can you tell me which 7 airlines you just looked at ads for? Which one did you find most appealing? Why? Least appealing? What did you take away from each ad? What do you think the airline wanted you to take away?

I have to say that, personally, I found the SIA (Singapore International Airlines) ad to be the most interesting/appealing to me. On the flip side, the first time I saw AirTran’s ad I couldn’t get myself to read all the text on the ad (which is really bad considering that I like this stuff). It took me a second to understood the message of Delta’s ad, but I’m not a gambler or card player at all. I found Korean Air’s ad visually interesting although I’m not really sure what the point was.

In an era when airline travel is increasingly commoditized, it’s interesting to see how airlines attempt to differentiate themselves through advertising.

A concept that came up early in my marketing class at Cornell is that customers don’t by drills, they buy holes. The point being that no one really wants a drill because they want a drill, but that they want a drill because they need a hole in something. If something comes along that can make holes better than a drill, you can count on the market demand for drills declining.

This got me thinking about the analogy in the airline business. What are customers of airlines really buying? A plane ticket? A plane ride? Hospitality? It seems to me that customers buy plane tickets because they need to get from one place to another. But if you consider it for a moment, airlines don’t really fulfill that service. What do I mean? Well, when was the last time you said, “I think I need to go to O’Hare”, or “a trip to La Guardia sounds fun”? More likely, you needed to attend a conference in Schaumburg or make a business presentation in Manhattan. If you are sitting in Pittsburgh, that means that the airlines only provide a piece of the service that you really need. In other words, airlines don’t provide the service of moving passengers from where they are to where they want to go. Instead, airlines tell their customers to get their items together and be at an airport close to their origin 2 hours before flying out, and then they transport their customers to a an airport closest to the their destination. From a marketer’s perspective, airlines are focused on selling seats on airplanes instead of providing the service that customers are really looking for.

This concept has been bouncing around in my head for the past few weeks, and this evening I learned of a tiny movement in the direction of really providing true point-to-point transportation services. EL AL Airlines has recently introduced an early, at-home check-in service. The service is only available in Israel, though, and as such, only helps with connecting the dots on the point-of-origin side of the trip. But, it’s a start, and I’ll be curious to see how it pans out for EL AL and if anyone else copy-cats it.

Charles Revson of Revlon Cosmetics once said, “In the factory we make cosmetics, but in my stores we sell hope”. What are airlines selling? I would say most are just selling seats on an airplane.

I came across this piece of captivating journalism in “Consulting Magazine”, and was struck by Rick Garlick’s bold comment “Airlines are part of the hospitality industry”. Mr. Garlick would be happy to know that Cornell University’s “Airline Service and Management” graduate course is actually taught by Cornell’s renowned School of Hotel Administration. Despite the fact that Cornell’s Hotel School teaches the University’s sole class devoted to the airline industry, I doubt many firms on Wall Street are going to move their airline analysts out of their transportation departments any time soon. Still, I was intrigued by Mr. Garlick’s comments so I pushed onward with a little Googling and came up with the original news release on Maritz Research and was rewarded with this gem, also from Mr. Garlick: “Competing on price is no longer an option for airlines”.

Oh, Rick, I think you may have just done yourself in with that one.

If I were to give Mr. Garlick the benefit of the doubt, I would guess that what he really meant to say was “competing on price alone is no longer an option for airlines”. It would be hard to find much fault if he had just added one little qualifying word.

But lets move on and consider the more salient point that Mr. Garlick was attempting to make: airline passengers want more. They want more legroom, they want more quality in their food, they want more peace and quiet on their flights, and they want more flights that they can utilize their frequent flyer rewards for. I can not imagine one airline that would disagree with any of that, but most airlines would be quick to point that although passengers do want all of those things, not enough of them are often willing to pay enough for them to make it a profitable affair. As a 6′5″ passenger, I was thrilled when American Airlines introduced their extra leg room on all domestic flights. AA become my favorite airline over night and I was willing to pay more to fly with them. But AA soon found out that not enough of the flying population was like me and they eventually canned the service.

Ultimately, I’m afraid that the good folks of Maritz may not realize that they only cover about half of the problem. Finding out what customers want is obviously an important step in the process, but, ultimately, it is finding out what enough customers will really pay enough extra for such that the airline can increase their bottom line that really matters.

Oh, and telling potential clients that they don’t know what industry they are in is probably bad marketing, too.