maxjet, we hardly knew ya
December 25th, 2007 by Dylan
Lost in the Christmas rush was the announcement on Christmas Eve that MaxJet has shut down operations and declared bankruptcy. MaxJet was my new favorite airline, providing amazing all-business class service from Los Angeles, Las Vegas, or New York to London Stansted. On our trip to Italy in October, we had such a great time on MaxJet that we were a bit disappointed when the flight from Los Angeles was over after “only” 11 hours.
In the end, the straw that broke MaxJet’s back was competitive pressure from American Airlines, which entered their one currently successful market (New York to Stansted). An all-business class service was an amazingly refreshing way to travel for long distance flgihts, and I hope that a revived MaxJet, EOS, or Silverjet will find a way to fill the void of non-stop, all premium service from the US west coast to Europe.
I own the ad agency that launched Maxjet in the New York and London markets. It’s true that for the price, the service couldn’t be beaten and the major carriers like BA and Virgin were certainly spooked at first.
The problem that the advertising had to address was that at an introductory price of $679 o/w people thought that their offering was too good to be true. In fact, prospects didn’t believe it to be true business class service. Hence our launch ad, “Business class service to London for just $679. What’s the catch?”
The advertising was targeted to entrepreneurial types who currently fly economy and pay out of their own pocket. We maintained an all-business tone ignoring the leisure traveler – who wants to fly with screaming kids?
The tag line we developed for the brand was “It’s just good business”. Other ads carried headlines such as, “$4,000 to fly business class is acceptable, unless of course, it’s your money.
Anyway, if you’re interested in seeing all the work go to munnrabot.com and click on ‘past favorites’ and Maxjet. We also used Jonathan Price as their radio announcer. The work and as a result the brand became talked about and liked. Once the advertising started raising awareness and filling seats management thought word of mouth to be enough going forward. Hoe wrong hey were.
I can tell you that they were never really adequately funded to do this properly. And in the end, their product was nothing to compare with BA and Virgin. Silverjet, however seems to have got it right. Whether they others succeed remains to be seen.