Delta Airlines Advertising Analysis

What comes to your mind when you think about advertising? Is it a television commercial? It is a plain black and white newspaper ad? Or what about a social media app? Advertising has many different communication outlets that can be used to promote a company’s brand, product, or service. By using advertising, a company uses some combination of media to get a message across to customers. Companies tend to use multiple strategies while advertising so that all targeted audiences have a potential to view the ad. Delta Airlines uses many different types of strategies when advertising to its segmented customer base to help capture all media users.

First off, when companies advertise they need to have a plan. How much is the company going to spend?

According to Advertising Age (2010), Delta’s advertisement spending fell by 50% to $32.9 million. Even now, in 2015, the advertisement budget has not increased for Delta Airlines. Compared to Southwest Airlines, a major U.S. competitor of Delta, spent $159.5 million in the same year, just on television commercials. If you combined all the advertising spending for Delta, United, America, and Continental Airlines in the same year, all of their company budgets put together would just about equal the $159.5 million Southwest spent, just on television ads (AdAge, 2010). Why is there such a decrease in ad spending? Is there a problem with

In addition to e-commerce, the company still runs television ads, puts up billboards, and occasionally displays ads in magazine spreads. They have cut budget spending for these items because the company does not feel they are as popular and they are not reaching their main customer target (Newsroom, 2015). For instance, if a customer wants to read a magazine or a newspaper article, many times the customer is using their smartphone, tablet, or computer to view these types of sources. Delta has taken advantage of this new trend for their advertising techniques. According to Tnooz (2013), “85% of Delta Airlines flight check-in globally take place via “preferred channels”--- Facebook, mobile apps, Delta.com, and airport kiosks, or any venue that doesn’t involve standing in line at a counter.” As an example, to show what percentage of frequent fliers carry smart phones, figure 1 displays a pie chart to show the