I doubt the new executive team at JetBlue made the call to sponsor The Daily Kos convention (background here). I’ll guess that somebody on the marketing team advocating their personal political agenda made the choice and decision. And the CEO now finds himself playing defense. Quite poorly I might add.
The only way this move makes sense is if Jet Blue wants to become the airline of choice for progressives/liberals and is intentionally alienating most of its potential customer base.
This is reminiscent of Google’s recent brush with Michael Moore supporters, Emily Tan’s current article on Carol Cone and "cause marketing" and, Laurie David’s potential impact on Prius sales.
4:30PDT Update – Turns out uber liberal George Soros is a significant JetBlue
shareholder. Maybe we have an activist shareholder hijacking the
JetBlue brand?
The point I want to emphasize for CEO’s is the risk associated with affiliating your brand with controversial causes like global warming, liberal activists, etc. So when your CMO walks into your office with his NPR coffee mug suggesting you might want to align your brand with a really good cause – proceed with caution.
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