American Airlines: Separate but lavender
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American Airlines has launched a website aimed at women. Is this a step in the right direction, or a marketer gone amok?
Granted, I’m a man, and I’m not in marketing, but I think the site is awful. For starters, I’m skeptical of a gender-specific airline booking site to begin with. How gendered is a plane ticket? After all, this is American Airlines, a traditional international airline, and not Hooters Air or its women-oriented equivalent. (Chippendales Air? “Chicks dig planes!” Umm, no.)
But I could understand it more if American were pitching itself as an airline that actually catered to women’s needs more than other airlines did. But what are women’s needs, when it comes to air travel, and how could American really cater to those needs any better than their competition?
More after the jump…
The new site for women doesn’t even try to make that pitch. Sure, the site has some links aimed at women, but they’re Jones New York-branded fashion advice, book recommendations, and some generic security tips that are universally applicable, not gender-specific.
Sweeping generalizations are rarely accurate, but if you’re going to put a gun to my head and force me to play the “men are from Mars, women from Venus” game, I think yes, it’s fair to say that women travel differently from men. But how? And how can an airline be more woman-friendly?
It probably depends on whether those are female business travelers, single college women on spring break, mothers with children, or whoever.
But even then, the answer isn’t clear to me. It might involve the inflight food and drink options, the entertainment, or the size of the overhead bins. It might be as fundamental as respect — I’ve heard women complain that flight attendants (including female flight attendants) don’t take women as seriously as men, and that women have a harder time getting “pampered” in first class than their male colleagues.
Ironically, in an interview, airline executives showed that they actually ARE paying attention to what women want:
American officials said they took into account comments from women in focus groups in the design of its new business-class seats in wide-body aircraft. The seats move slightly forward, allowing for a bit more privacy from the person in the next seat. American also added hooks on the seat backs when women wondered where to store their purses.
See, that’s good! But that’s completely missing from their “women’s website.”
By just throwing up some links and coloring their flight search box lavender, the site comes off as nothing more than a cynical ploy.
So l ask you: What do women really want when it comes to air travel? And what should an airline site for women entail? Hit the comments!
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April 11th, 2007 at 8:54 am |
I am not a makeup wearing very girly girl. But good lord, on the flight I want a little moisturizer, some lip balm, a little elbow room in the bathroom to wash my face. An airlines that’s listening would make sure I have access to those things - they’d have found a way to work within the TSA regs that make me question the tube of toothpaste I’ve tossed into my carry on.
I want some kind of reassurance that the guy next to me will not turn in to a slobbering or lecherous or racist drunk. (All real experiences, though I get that this is not up to the airlines, really.) I want airlines to figure out the damn seats because a smallish person, I almost always lose the armrest to a bigger, pushier guy.
And I want not to be lumped into some bucket with moms, who have totally different travel needs than I do. Or with biz travelers, who have totally different travel needs than I. Or aging grans, who have totally different needs than I…
A-hem. You see where I’m going. It looks like marketing madness to me. I hope it’s okay for me to drop a link to commentary on this by fellow BlogHer contributer Suzanne:
AA: Helping Us Clueless Women Fly to Spas.
April 11th, 2007 at 9:05 am |
Thanks for your comment, Pam.
Some readers might not be able to click that link you provided, so here it is again:
http://blogher.org/node/17958
(A technical note: For some reason, active links are not working in comments if you’re reading this site in Firefox on the PC. I’m trying to figure out why. If anyone has any ideas, please drop me a line via the “contact” link at the top right.)
April 11th, 2007 at 10:10 am |
This is the silliest thing I’ve ever seen. I’m a man, so I guess I don’t get anything personalized, but…for real…what the heck is that site?
A purple search box? Some generic information? Lame.
If you can’t do something right, don’t do it at all. And yes, I’m an American Airlines frequent flier.
April 11th, 2007 at 12:01 pm |
Good lord - this makes American sound like they’ve just discovered women travelers. Pam makes a good point — you can’t just lump us all together because we’re women. I mean, I am a frequent business traveler, but I’m also a mother who flies with her 16-month-old baby. That means I have different needs for my flights.
I remember back in the mid-1990s, the second (or third - who can keep up) incarnation of Midway Airlines came up with a similar marketing program. They dedicated one lav just for women, and put in a larger mirror and flowers. Forget that - I need more room for my laptop!!
April 11th, 2007 at 12:33 pm |
My wife, who is too
lazybusy to comment here herself, just pointed out to me that the ladies’ booking box features an AA plane peeking in. “Seems awfully phallic,” she said.April 11th, 2007 at 3:27 pm |
I’m with you, Benet!
Mark, you ask what women travelers want. I just posted an entry about AA’s Web site myself, with a couple of suggestions for what AA can do if it REALLY cares about women:
http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/blogs/perrinpost/2007/04/american_airlin.html#more
Hope you enjoy it,
Wendy
April 11th, 2007 at 9:11 pm |
Mark,
Agree completely. We’ve also posted a critical note about this — giving both a male and female perspective — on http://howtotravelamerica.blogspot.com . It’s totally a marketing gimmick, with no real apparent value to women OR men.
April 13th, 2007 at 11:37 am |
[…] Lavender Update: The controversial and lame American Airlines website for women got a minor redesign, as Meg at the Consumerist noticed. See […]
June 1st, 2007 at 1:14 am |
I don’t think that a company marketing to a specific gender will work, particularly an airline. It’s not cosmetics. With airlines I think marketing has to be a little more subtle. Hooters Air couldn’t quite stay aloft, and they basically marketed to intoxicated men with scantilly clad waitresses. You’d think that would have been a money maker.
June 11th, 2007 at 5:21 pm |
[…] the site’s color-scheme. The color has since been changed–tag lines such as “Separate but lavender” were arguably not the sort of attention the airline was hoping would spread across the Internet in […]
October 2nd, 2007 at 9:04 pm |
There is some b.s. in the air….