How JetBlue became one of the hottest brands in America

Kinda lost me after stating…”we've been publicly reported as $30 million [in ad spending], which we've never confirmed, and we're up against one of our biggest competitors, Southwest, spending four or five times that.”??? Great “Marketing Speak”…he ought be aware that one should “never” use the word “never”. Yet lets give him the benefit of the doubt here & presume the spending # has NEVER been “reported”. Did he not just confirm the # by stating what a competitor IS spending? Or, is B6 spending more than 30 mil & not getting the ROI, in which case it behooves him—since he is the top marketing banana to infer that the total dollar sum is indeed less, because it is getting less traction than SW? He completely lost me when stating “Every seat on every flight is available. Right now in existing loyalty programs you basically fly when the airlines wants you to fly.”…Odd? So B6's loyalty program has been “tweaked” & it is now predicated upon $$$ spent opposed to miles flown (the FACT is that this template is not embraced by either leisure of business traveler)…What is curious is that making every seat available for award travel is an anchor of the SW Rapid Rewards program & was in place even BEFORE B6 EXISTED…no innovation here, just copying. Also, SW's loyalty program remains PREDICATED upon SEGMENTS flown, NOT MONEY SPENT. Thus B6 is not innovating, they are replicating…& doing so in a manner that flyers “don't like” ($$$ based) in order to build loyalty…How does that work? B6 is a great airline, but it is also a lot of “hot air” as was proven during a certain Valentine's Day ice-storm during which it was revealed, that the ACTUAL infrastructure of B6 was pretty lame. USAirways has a notorious image & poor brand identity…however, B6 in terms of location-location-location & aircraft (besides the TV's)is starting to look a lot like US…WITHOUT its OWN international feed & independent of a worldwide alliance…would have been far more interesting if Mr. St. George actually addressed these issues & how the new agency is going to help define how B6 will succeed without either…instead he just “talked”, didn't say anything new (great that he loves twitter—I'm certain loads of high powered law firms along the eastern seaboard follow him daily…actually…), and made B6 into a market leader—which in some respects it is—but used examples that show B6 to be a market follower…hopefully the reality is that B6 has it's infrastructure in order…because it has proven great @ self promoting, yet has not proven that it can avoid the common pitfalls of the industry.