The “All-Digital Agency All the Time” – Part Two of Compass Points’ Agency of the Future Series.

Maurice Levy is perhaps the most underreported, undervalued person in advertising. In the span of 20 years, he has taken a smallish European network of agencies based in Paris and built it into a colossus.

Publicis Groupe today owns Publicis, Saatchi, Leo Burnett, Fallon, 49% of Bartle Bogle Hegarty, Droga5, Starcom, Mediavest and now the digital giants, Digitas, the largest digital agency in the world, with Razorfish and VivaKi, Denuo and on and on.

But, though we hear all the time from Martin Sorrell of WPP, Michael Roth of Interpublic and occasionally even from press-shy John Wren of Omnicom, the American business press features Levy. When it came time for Business Week to do a cover story on advertising’s current problems, it bypassed Levy for the flamboyant (“Love Notes”), Australian-born CEO of the Saatchi network, Kevin Roberts.

One reason Levy has outdistanced his rivals in terms of turning in solid, quarter-on-quarter revenues and profits, is that he saw the downturn coming 10 or so years ago and began buying up digital assets. Today 25% of Publicis Groupe’s revenues come from digital advertising and media services. Levy saw the future, bet the farm on digital and now is worth a careful hearing.

A week ago MediaPost.com reported that Levy plans to transform Publicis Groupe into an “all-digital agency.” “We have very good numbers for growth in digital,” he said. “And this is something which is offsetting the decrease of some other activities.”

So I’ve been trying to figure out what Levy means by “all-digital agency.” First of all, I wish had he had been challenged on whether he was talking about just letting Digitas and his other digital assets grow and prosper, or whether he was speaking as head of the holding company, and meant that all his properties were going to become “all-digital.”

And then I started thinking about what that phrase would mean—if by it you really wanted to change mission statement of his three big traditional networks, Leo Burnett, Publicis and Saatchi.

Would that mean that these great monoliths would dare to call themselves All Digital—and jettison the layers of people they still have trying to shoehorn their clients into big branding campaigns played out in TV and print and in radio?

Or did he mean that he was going to force them to think of digital first, and come up with digital solutions that then could be applied in appropriate ways to other platforms and other media?

Or is All Digital a new language in branding—so all he was talking about was literacy in this new tongue? Or is it a strategy? Or is it just the natural evolution of where the business is going?

When Business Week in the Kevin Roberts’ cover story noted the drop in revenues at Saatchi and asked Levy what he was going to do about it, he responded that he wasn’t going to do anything about it—that that was Kevin Roberts problem. Quoting Business Week:

[Levy wondered] if a creative agency like Saatchi should continue to manage a client's branding efforts. Perhaps the digital specialists should do it….Levy expresses nothing but affection and admiration for Roberts. But he warns: "It is no longer necessarily the creative agency dictating what's best for the client."

Here I think Levy, visionary that he is, is pulling our leg. Saatchi has a number of major clients—led by global duties on Toyota. Until Toyota is ready to demand an “all digital agency”—I don’t think Roberts is ready to change its spots—nor is Levy about to demand it.

Ah me, sometimes we can see the future so clearly. But we have to wait months or years for what we see in our crystal balls to become reality.

Everyone is changing gears as fast as they can, led by clients who helped Internet advertising grow 37.5% in the second quarter of this year. But when and if Toyota is ready to make its big move, say transforming Prius into a separate division rather than a couple of hybrids, will it rely primarily on digital to make the change?

I think not. I think we are still in the nether world where it’s going to take us 10 years or so to resolve all these issues. Digital may be just a language, which becomes second nature to all of us. But it certainly is not a strategy. The strategy still is to build in consumers a feeling for the brand and a need for the brand. We know, then, that the Prius must act a certain way over time—and respond to consumers wherever they touch the brand, either in an ad, in a call to customer service, in the showroom, or on the Web.

I think where Levy is going is similar to what Bill Gates did at Microsoft, when he told his minions 10 years ago that from now on everything at Microsoft would be built to live on the Internet. Windows 7 still comes in a box. You still can buy it in a store (in fact soon you’re going to be able to buy it in a Microsoft store). But it must be available on the Web, and everything it does must easily move back and forth over the Web to other users. Levy, I think, is trying to take his empire to a similar place and he’s agnostic whether Kevin Roberts leads the charge or Laura Lang, CEO of Digitas Worldwide, leads it.

These are important real-life issues for agency heads, especially right now as they re-engineer their agencies and budgets for 2010. Unfortunately there are no hard answers. So they can either follow Levy, and seek to make major changes now, or take baby steps and let the future take care of itself.

But tens of thousands of jobs and tens of millions of dollars in revenue depend on each agency head making the right call. And All Digital, to me, is an intriguing concept.

What Will It Take to Make Google Eat Slower…or At Least Take Time Out for a Burp?

Google is obviously searching for new revenue sources—and more often than not focusing on the ad world.

It already owns most of the world of search. Microsoft’s Bing is a good play but its inroads into Google’s main ad business is really just a little ant bite in the side of the Giant’s furry mane.

Then with very little fanfare last year something called Google Voice began offering free telephone service. It had sought to dodge regulation by the FCC arguing that it was not a traditional telecom. AT&T, however, complained when it discovered that Google Voice was blocking calls to rural exchanges. But Google said that “net neutrality” rules only applied to Internet service providers, not to companies that created Web-based software apps, such as Google Voice.

But Google will probably be hoisted with its own petard, because on the one hand it says it wants to ensure open broadband networks, and on the other it is blocking rural service connections because rural telcos add high “termination rates” for calls and partner with adult sex chat lines and conference calling centers.

Google has just revealed more of its plan for next year’s launch of an ebook store, Google Editions. This service will make books the million or so books in its database searchable. Publishers will set the price of books and Google will take in its share of profits and share them with retail partners. The thinking is that Google Editions will initially threaten Barnes & Noble.com’s Nook and Amazon.com’s Kindle, but theoretically it could cut them in on the take.

But the more interesting play is whether Google will have success finding some ways of integrating ads into its book downloads—say through in-text ads or some way to cram code into a home page when users sign on for additional downloads. Michael J. Gyulai, of the Transfer Media Group, sees Google having a wide open field. “In the beginning, it will be too difficult to add ads in a manuscript,” he told MediaPost.com, “but I could see a Google Editions home page that analyzes ebooks bought. When you load up the My Google Editions library, I can see ads on that page from the start.”

Google has major competitors now on both the telco and ebook fronts who are beginning to cry foul to the Obama Administration Justice Department.

But so far, even though lawsuits here and in Europe have occasionally reined in Google, no one has forced it to abandon a business it is intent on developing. Getting Google to “play fair” in these new sandboxes will be a major headache.

What Will It Take to Wake Up These Dogs?

Let’s look at some brands that are in dire need of freshening.

Let’s start with cars. Everyone loves to talk about cars. Is Bob Lutz really shaking up GM advertising? Not yet—but his team recently did put Modernista! on notice and put Cadillac in review. For some reason the trades don’t seem very excited about it.

Who’s going to win VW? We don’t know yet—but the list has narrowed. DDB/New York (my pick) and Wieden got tossed. That leaves Deutsch L.A. and Goodby Silverstein & Partners, S.F. I guess the smart money has moved to Deutsch. Both agencies in recent memory had Saturn as a client, both have had other car accounts. But their cultures are very different.

VW marketing is now helmed by an Italian, Luca De Meo, who for a time ran Fiat and then Alfa Romeo. The automotive press says he’s a bright young car executive with very good instincts and the ability to make up his mind quickly. Expect a decision in the next two to three weeks.

Well enough silly topicality. What about those dowdy matrons hiding in the back of the room, afraid that no one will ask them to dance?

Case No.1: Mitsubishi. When was the last time you saw a memorable TV spot for Mitsubishi? Remember the girl trying to herky jerky in the front seat to some interesting music? Well that was out of Deutsch L.A. 10 years ago. Traffic won the account, previously at BBDO West, a year ago, in a shoot-out with Wong Doody Ignited Minds and DDB. Traffic is a new agency backed by Tom Cordner, previously the creative leader of Team One (Lexus) and investor Bob Farina.

But what have they done? You can be sure that Traffic is frustrated that it hasn’t been able to give the brand a higher profile. If you go to YouTube there are plenty of highly-viewed videos of Mitsubishi’s EVO IX and EVO X. These are so-called drift cars that do zero to 60 in four seconds and are evenly weighted enough so that you can go into a 360 spin without losing control. In other words, an exciting car. Unfortunately, you can’t make TV commercials selling speed and the Mitsubishis for sale are much less exciting cars with names like Lancer and Galant. Anyway Traffic has yet to crack the brief.

Case No.2. Eddie Bauer. When last heard from (in 2008) Eddie Bauer Apparel Stores was a subsidiary of Eddie Bauer Holdings, Inc., a publicly traded company, with stores in North America, Germany and Japan. There were Eddie Bauer Signature Eyewear; Eddie Bauer sponsorships with National Geographic of “Radio Expeditions” on NPR; an Eddie Bauer line of home furnishings with everything you would need to be cozy in a winter cabin, right down to the thick blanket and wool rug; a line of Eddie Bauer mountain bikes launched with Giant Bicycle, Inc.; and the Eddie Bauer Edition line of S.U.V.s from Ford.

Then earlier this year, everything came crashing down when Eddie Bauer filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It is currently waiting for court approval to sell itself to a private equity firm for $200 million. Meanwhile Publicis West in Seattle is no doubt waiting to hear if it’s still the brand’s agency.

If it is able to wiggle out of its financial problems, then much needs to be done before the brand attempts a return to its “adventure roots.” After all, this was the company which invented the quilted down jacket and military down sleeping bag but so what?

There are already plenty of outdoor and/or adventure apparel companies which own the space—many of them doing business either online and/or through a catalog with virtually no brick and mortar stores weighing down their balance sheet. What man or woman who enjoys the outdoors can’t find several L.L. Bean or REI catalogs stuck around on a back shelf somewhere? But of those, how many have ever been to an L.L. Bean or REI store? (If you are in California or Washington, substitute Orvis for REI).

It used to be that Patagonia was just a store for kayakers or mountain climbers. Today their stores are everywhere, selling t-shirts, fleece sweaters and vests, rain jackets and daypacks, all with a lifetime money-back guarantee.

So where will Eddie Bauer fit into this Gore-Tex landscape with a distinctive positioning that make their products stand out? If you could figure out a USP then you could fashion a memorable ad campaign—but it has to be long-running. And the owners will probably have to double their pre-2009 $10 million budget if they hope to make a dent.

Send me your nomination for brands—not dogs without a pulse, but brands which with a little prodding and some energy bars could get back in the game.

An Urgent Letter to Alex Taylor III

Fortune Magazine deserves an ASME elephant for the journalism of senior auto writer Alex Taylor III. He’s the only writer-reporter-analyst left, other than my good friend David Kiley at Business Week, who knows where the bodies are buried in Detroit.

So when Taylor writes a cover story, “It’s Clutch Time for Fritz Henderson and GM” (Oct. 12, 2009 issue), we all should sit up and take notice. The question is whether even Taylor has been in Detroit too long. His “Special Report” is balanced, well written and full of hope. Henderson is obviously a breath of fresh air in the executive suite. He can manage an online press conference, answering 30 reporter’s questions in 45 minutes. Wow!

But even though GM has slimmed down considerably through the last year, has lost many of its onerous structural and legacy costs, and has been able to cut back on brands, factories and non-performing dealers, the question still remains: is it capable of making great cars that Americans want to buy?

Sure, it’s clutch time. Certainly that isn’t news. It’s been clutch time at least from the day nine years ago when Rick Wagoner took over the company and began saying that, with just a little bit of this or that, GM would be just fine. (Remember when Wagoner had dinner with Carlos Ghosn of Renault-Nissan and said later that GM could snap back without foreign help?).

Meanwhile Henderson has surrounded himself almost entirely with GM old-timers. Sure he’s capable of saying no to them. I’m glad to hear that he turned vetoed Bob Lutz’s plan to rename a Pontiac G8 as a Chevrolet Caprice. But can he teach GM to tell the truth?

His first mistake may have been naming the charismatic, 77-year-old Lutz his chief of marketing. Lutz is the ultimate car guy; he was brought in several years ago with plenty of authority to put some pizzazz into GM’s styling, and, to my thinking, he failed. [The Malibu was a hit before he got there.] Lutz said he planned to shake up GM’s advertising—and last week he fired Modernista!, Boston, as Cadillac’s agency. But it will be another six months before we see what Lutz can do to give the Chevy, Buick, Cadillac and GMC brands better definition and punch.

Never mind doing great advertising. For starters, can Lutz just make GM’s marketing credible. But he is such a gung-ho type he may be able to take that first baby step. Take the latest campaign to be produced on Lutz’s watch: chairman Ed Whitacre’s money-back guarantee TV spot.

None of us had heard much about Whitacre before he came over last spring at the U.S. government’s invitation from AT&T to take command of the GM board.

In this spot, he strikes a Lee Iacocca-like pose, challenging people to buy GM cars and trucks for 60 days to see if they like them. “Like a lot of you I had misgivings about GM cars,” he says before assuring us that “car-for-car” they’re better than the competition.

Huh?

Such a statement isn’t even close to true. Alex Taylor, who strangely didn’t comment on the Whitacre ad, writes, even Korean-import Hyundai “outpaces ever GM brand in quality and outsells every GM brand except Chevy.”

I’m glad that Chairman Whitacre is offering to let us test drive a GM car and, if we’re not entirely satisfied, to return it for a full refund. What he fails to mention are the conditions—notably that you have to drive a GM car for a minimum 30 days before you are eligible for a buy-back.

Worse, isn’t it a little early to be challenging Americans to test drive GM cars? Aren’t there better reasons—like their price and value, warranty, some of their more competitive features—to consider buying a GM car? And what is GM doing wasting money on ads for GM anyway? No one drives a GM car. The closest you can get to that is a Jimmy—a GMC truck. So why isn’t GM spending its media dollars that on its individual car brands sitting on the dealers’ lots?

The point is that a company which can’t even get its communications right is unlikely to be trusted to get its design and manufacturing quality right. Even during the transition period from the Wagoner to the Henderson eras, there are a lot of GM cars to be sold. GM should start learning to tell the truth about them now and slowly, carefully rebuild its relationship with the American consumer.

Alex Taylor – you’re our last best hope. Don’t let Fritz take you on any more test drives. Don’t spend too much time in the GM executive lunchroom being amazed by the change in the hidebound customs of its Renaissance Plaza headquarters. GM under Fritz has a chance to get it right. But it’s a long odds game. And we’re counting on you, Alex, to make sure to keep honest book on the lot of them. Especially because, as taxpayers, we own a huge piece of GM and want our money back.

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ADVERTISING AGENCY (AS WE’VE KNOWN IT)

I’ve spent the last week worrying about the affairs of the industry I love—and to which I’ve devoted the last 25 years of my working life.

As we enter budget-planning season, management of some mid-sized and some very large agencies are currently going through the excruciating exercise of trying to envision what 2010 will look like. Just about everyone in this business knows how to get through a bad year. What they are not trained to do is to hang on for four or five years, waiting for the Great Ship to right itself.

I was moved by what General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt had to say, in a recent issue of Fortune (Aug. 31), about what he’s doing to drag his brand out of the muck. Immelt has put out the word to managers, when they come in to forecast 2010, not to start by explaining what caused the decline in 2009. He said he wanted the presentations to go from “The market’s slow” to “There’s an 80-locomotive order in Egypt—let’s go get it.”

I think we have to be quite brutal about continuing to pare down costs and jettison slow-moving efforts. There may not be a great demand in the near- to middle distant-future for copywriters who know how to construct a great magazine ad. But there is no doubt a continuing demand for creatives who understand the new world of fragmented media and who enjoy doing something unusual in the digital space. I’m thinking about the Toy’s “Elf Yourself” work for Office Max (now getting ready to go into its third year), and Pereira & O’Dell’s “Go Miniman Go” blog for Lego.

But the larger issue continues to be the koan sent me last week by “Hal” about how our great creative agencies should re-engineer themselves to deal with this ever-changing, media- and brand-reality. It’s going to take some very brave, deep-pocketed managers to plan and fund such a transformation.

Essentially agency owners are going to have to forego profit participation for a year or two, while they rebuild their agencies from the ground up. Either that or go out and acquire a strong, young digital partner and then quickly meld the two cultures in an agnostic way that does not force the digital agency into a submissive, inferior role that snuffs out its value. The last time we re-engineered like this was back in 1991 to 1992. I know because Stuart Sanders and I ran conferences on the subject—and we were always sold out. But it’s painful and scary.

Can mid-sized creative agencies muddle through? Perhaps, at least for a while.

I’ve been reading about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Rome reached its zenith, Wikipedia tells us, in the second century. Then its fortunes slowly declined for another 200 years, ending on September 4, 476 when Romulus Augustus was deposed by Odacer, the Visigoth king, who led a band of German mercenaries into Rome and sacked the city. (Others would quibble that this is only the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and the so-called Eastern Empire didn’t collapse until the fall of Constantinople in 1453). Was that how sausages made their way into Italian cooking? I wonder.

I remember in 1990 when Ken Fadner took me to breakfast to tell me that he and his partners had sold Adweek to something called Boston Ventures, later to become BPI, then VNU and now Nielsen. I was pretty bummed out. “This is the end of the dream, Ken,” I told him. “No, not necessarily,” said Fadner. “Maybe the conquered will conquer the conquerors.”

Hey, I love contrarian theories. And, sure, it’s always possible that a company like Citibank would acquire or merge with a company like Travelers Group and that Sandy Weill of Travelers would work gradually, as a “co-CEO” with Citibank’s John Reed to reform Citibank and turn it into Citigroup. But that isn’t what happened. After an interim period, Sandy Weill overthrew John Reed and pushed him into retirement.

You get bought, you’re toast.

So we’re all going to have to tread lightly here. This, by my reckoning, is the fourth inning of at least a nine inning game. I would say the Romans are losing to the Goths right now. And a lot of great agency brands are going to disappear in the next two years. But it’s not all bad. We’re going to see some exciting new agencies –- call them strategists, widget makers, creative planners, or what you will—take their place.

“Hey, waiter! Bring me an 80-locomotive order.”

Agency of the Future: Does It Even Exist (Yet)?

A friend of mine, we’ll give him the fictional first name of Hal, writes this deceptively simple query [and let me quote his intro because it was so flattering that I, oh-so-briefly, thought I might have the answer]:

Dear Andrew:

“You are so “well traveled” in this advertising industry and so wise, I thought to write this request of you. The world is changing around us inexorably. The advertising you and I have grown up on is diminishing, becoming eclipsed by the digital revolution which to me is really “the revenge of direct marketing”. Much more one-to-one communication than mass communication. Real and actual dialogue between companies and their consumers. Consumers are getting the upper hand. Companies HAVE to be completely transparent, or risk “getting pantsed” by their not-so-loyal consumers in a scathing blog. Mobile device media placements. Social networking…..

You know the rest. You know it all. I don’t have to beat this [dead] horse. But I have a simple request: Who do you think is “there” or ahead of us? Who should we study, model ourselves against? What agencies are leading the charge?

Regards, Hal

---------

Dear Hal:

After giving this question a great deal of thought--well at least an hour's worth--I discover that I have only glimmers of a new day aborning to offer. First there is no perfect agency of the future--just as there wasn't five years ago, when I wrote the reasonably perceptive, modest little book, “Casting for Big Ideas.”

One issue you have to address is how well do you want to “speak digital” without losing your leadership in traditional advertising, something Robert Greenberg of R/GA diminishes as “old line story telling?” If you really wanted to become thoroughly literate in digital, then you would have to remake your agency to go up against the likes of AKQA, AvenueA/Razorfish, Tribal DDB and Digitas. And as my favorite Irish Catholic priest would say, even on a good day they would kick the bejesus out of you.

So I'd be careful about following this path. So far the only mainline agency of size to take this route is Crispin. If you're a client and you give them an assignment, you can be sure that they're going to come back with a multi-layered, multimedia idea, that probably will start on the Web and finish in traditional as an afterthought.

A second line you could pursue is as a hybrid, as I believe Goodby, Wieden, TBWA, and to a lesser extent Martin, Mullen and Lowe/ New York are doing today. Hybrids have the ability to come up with “story-driven” ideas that live in traditional media as easily as they can come up with innovative, Web-based campaigns. And clients are comfortable paying full fare for their ideas and work--at the same time they may hire a digital agency to carry through on the digital part of the campaign--to assure they are getting the best of both worlds.

Then there are many agencies which really haven't made the adjustment to digital -- and are still swimming happily in the old world--because more often than not they are paired with strong digital players, and don't want to tread on another agencies “turf.” In fact, in many pitches these kind of agencies--which for the purposes of this blog will remain nameless--are invited to pitch paired with “their little brother” [translation: digital agency] in a joint effort, where the big, networked, old-line agency will be responsible for integrating all the work across all platforms.

In other words, Hal, if you were really to break with your profitable past and totally remake your agency, you would be one of the first to do so successfully.

A decade ago, I would have thought that one or two of the new “hot” boutiques in New York-Anomaly, Strawberry Frog, Taxi, 72andSunny, would have made this leap. But they didn't, really. Like I say, Crispin is the closest example we have of a successful big, medium-sized agency which is truly media-neutral. If there is another I don't know of it.

Signed,

Baffled

Brand Loyalty – A mile wide, an inch deep.

The news for brand managers was not good. A study by the CMO Council. which represents chief marketing officers, and Catalina Marketing’s Pointer Media Network, found that by this year more than half of a typical U.S. brand’s most loyal shoppers in 2007 had switched brands.

Based on a study of 685 grocery- and pharmacy-stocked brands, using data from 32 million consumers’ supermarket loyalty cards, found that in 2008 the average brand lost about a third of its highly loyal customers.

Of course every recession pressures consumers to start looking for deals. If for no other reason than the credit card and bank cards that fuel their purchases changed the rules and either raised interest or required maintenance of higher balances. Meanwhile, many people lost their jobs or felt threatened with loss of a job, and that along with media hype about the recession, caused consumers to cower in fear.

But still the loss is serious, because many of those customers will never return. “Defection is top of mind for brand managers,” says Eric Anderson, associate professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Chicago.

At the same time, Brand Keys, a research consulting firm, found that there were still plenty of brands which were able to recruit and hold loyal customers, providing that the brands didn’t change their message or value to core customers and they delivered or over-delivered on their brand promise.

The 2009 winners of Brand Keys annual Customer Loyalty Engagement Index included Jet Blue and Southwest Airlines, which tied in the airline category; Nike in Athletic Footwear; Toyota in Automotive; Sam Adams in Beer; Cheerios in adult Cereal and Frosted Flakes in kids’ Cereal; Allstate in Car Insurance; Olive Garden in Casual Dining; J. Crew in Clothing Catalogues and Retail Apparel Stores; Dunkin’ Donuts in Coffee; Apple in Computers; Canon in Digital SLR Cameras; Samsung in DVD players, HDTV (Plasma and LCD); ABC in Evening News; BP in Gasoline; W in Luxury Hotels; and Embassy Suites in Upscale Hotels/Motels; Tide in Laundry Detergent; Verizon in Long Distance Carriers; Konica Minolta in Office Copiers; Amazon.com in Online Books & Music; FedEx in Parcel Delivery; Domino’s in Pizza; McDonald’s in Quick Serve Restaurants; Avis in Rental Cars; Walmart in Discount Retail Stores; Best Buy in Electronic Stores; Staples in Office Supply; True Value in Home Improvement; Google in Search Engines; Pepsi in Soft Drinks and Diet Pepsi in Diet Drinks; Grey Goose in Vodka, iPhone and Samsung, tied for Wireless Handsets; and Verizon Wireless in Wireless Phone Service.

Looking over that list there are not too many surprises. For all that Starbucks has tried to do to put back an emphasis on experience and reward into a cup of coffee, Dunkin’ Donuts still holds sway, having been able to serve the same quality cup of joe for half the price.

United, American and Delta have tried to improve the service they provide for their still overpriced cost of travel, but, in the end, Jet Blue and Southwest beat them on price and service.

GEICO has sold itself well on providing a price break for car insurance, but Allstate still has given you the feeling that they’re going to give you better service for the price, especially when something awful happens and you suddenly need help.

Cheerios, Pepsi, McDonald’s and FedEx—these are American brand icons which have been careful to continue to maintain the quality of their service or product while supporting the brand with consistent communications.

What’s interesting is that Jet Blue is still in the money. The airline two years ago received a lot of bad publicity when its passengers were trapped in Jet Blue planes for hours at several Northeast airports due to a snowstorm . The incident cost founder David Neeleman his job as CEO. But the airlne apologized for the unusual service lapse, embraced a new passenger Bill of Rights that involved giving free tickets to passengers who were inconvenienced and took measures to improve operations.

It reportedly cost Jet Blue $30 millionl. But the cost was relatively small if as the current survey shows the airline was able to save its good name.