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Parents Fly Free...of terror

My son gets the credit for this one. An airline or range of flights dedicated to parents with small children. My little guy loves planes. He was flying from a rather young age and had over 3000 miles under his belt before he turned 1year old. With family on the east, west and mid coast our toddler is a flight veteran. He has flown into Boston enough that he announces our arrival when he see's the bay. Needless to say he always wants to go the airport and he has a few beloved toy airplanes that sleep near his bed. So tonight he points to his airplane and says, "fwy (fly) t' vacatioland...dada peopo fwy...all kids, plane has all kids dada." I say, "that's a great idea buddy!" Imagine an airline that caters to parents with small kids and flights that are listed as kid friendly...kind of like kid friendly movie times at the theater (packs a full house in Madison). I would probably pay a premium for this service and we would fly at least once per quarter if flights remained as low as they have been in the last two years.

So we are a few weeks away from visiting my parents and our son is all excited about flying. My wife and I are well, mentally preparing for the adventure. Flying with an infant and a toddler is a treat that one cannot quite comprehend without experiencing first hand. One of two things will happen. It will either be good n peacefully with the boys charming the pants of every older lady in the plane OR it will end with some sort of drama like the last time we flew to Boston. There was this jerk off 28ish year old business lady who freaked out on me because our son was putting stuff in and out of the seat back pouch. It was really bothering her...all 3-5 minutes of this behavior. She turns around in a huff and proceeds to flip out on me then she drops her seat back and starts slamming her body into to her chair smashing into my knees pinning my son who is standing between me and the chair. This is when it got real fun for me and papa bear chemicals kicked in and I literally kicked her ass from under her seat and smacked the back of her seat so hard that her head snapped back and whapped my hand while it went forward (yeah I'm not proud but that's what happened). I imagine some sort of foul words rolled off my tongue and then ended with "settle the F down" bellowing while my nostrils flared. I looked into the seat next to me and saw my wife looking like she was ready to pounce. Long story short, she freaked me out and I in turn freaked her out. When we landed I just stared her down like any good parent who's protecting his kid would do. She avoided my gaze, we exited the plane and got on with life. The adrenaline made the flight seem shorter than normal so at least one thing positive came out of that incident.

While driving north on I-95 I just started laughing uncontrollably about the situation. How embarrassing that it even happened or that I reacted that way or that I even wrote it down here for you read. The situation was really ridiculous and could have been avoided. Furthermore providing parents a way to avoid such conflicts would command loyalty above and beyond compare not to mention higher margin fares.

The customer potential- My wife and I hang out with a large group of people of greatly varying ages and none of them are from this area. Everyone is from somewhere else. Everyone has far away parents who want to see their grand kids. All of us fly quite a bit for work. We know many people just like us. The US has changed greatly, for better or worse, it is common for people to live far from family and friends. More common is flying once or more per year.

Kid friendly flights would take the edge off flying and parents would in fact fly more. They'd make everyone happier, especially veteran fliers who have come to think public settings such as flying with 200 other strangers should somehow be devoid of public experiences. Never mind the cute/adorable public advertising opportunities showing perfect doll-like children smiling while a fully branded flight attendant smiles and hands a nice milk and animal cracker snack over to a kid who is returning from the MagicKingdom or a short visit with a far away grandparent. Grandparents could be targeted specifically..."hello, we know you miss your sweet adorable grand kids, sure your kids gave you some line about flying with children being a horrible experience but no more. Now with more KidFriendly routes than any other carrier. Go on buy them that ticket with your VisaBoomerUberPlatinum card and see your grand kids..."

What more is awesome is kid friendly flights would flush out some other super innovation opportunities that are good for everyone like family bathrooms, snack food that is healthy and doesn't taste like salty cardboard, stroller tagging (no more held up boarding lines yay), milk that is fresh, car seats provided by the airlines, kid friendly security areas, perhaps nicer people (if that could be considered innovative). I could go on all night but I won't though as I read through this I am totally reminded of a sketch I did about FEDEX moving all of Business by offering business only flights. It would be magical and FEDEX would kill it. United's days would be numbered, but that's a different story.

Anyhoo. Some things to remember. If your business can pander to parents then the parents will reward you. You don't even need to provide a good product you just have to dig kids and accept that they will be kids. Great product and great kid service gets even more love. Second, don't poke mama or papa bear. Parents protecting their kids are crazed and it's all chemical. They could be the sweetest and nicest persons otherwise...especially don't poke mama bears. Third, parents are just as nervous about flying with their kids as the childless people who cringe when they see a pile of kids coming toward their gate but there is a reason they are flying and it isn't just to annoy everyone on the plane (three of my trips last year were prompted by family cancer illness-yeah don't poke the bear yo). Fourth, if you think the kid next to you couldn't get any more annoying then definitely don't have kids of your own. There is no end to how annoying a child can become to a childless adult. Parents have simply learned how to filter out those parts. They may look like bad parents to the childless but they look like people trying to get on with their life to other parents. Fifth and last, shit happens, just imagine if all that shit happened among people sharing the similar life experiences. Kid friendly flights. It is about time.

Direct mail works if ya don't throw it away first!

I was going through a bunch of mail tonight. Most, if not all, of our mail is junk. We are paperless bill people so 95% of all paper mail goes straight to the City of Madison Recycling Program. The only crap mail I look forward to is the Menards weekly...oh I do love saving big money at Menards!  ... I can't say enough how much mail advertising bugs the liven crap outta me. Really, I think junk mail offenders should be required to take back their crap afterall it is my tax dollars and my waste management bills that they are increasing. ...but that is a story better saved for the tavern! Back to business, ahem making value.

Direct mail...

Avatars, conferences and grandpaAwesome

 

Finally, I got it!  The Avatar catalyst (above)! Hooray.  Well, actually I had it two weeks ago and then I lost it...little cognitive-wazoo on my part. Seems Blackberry doesn't automatically save text images to disk the way my old Moto Razor did and upon clearing my entire inbox I discovered I erased the coveted Avatar image. My bad. Then work got all crazy fun and I lost track of time...regardless, here we go!

So if you are wondering, this rant is the follow up to "four ideations and one I can't post." Read that one first if you have to otherwise (sans the typos) I recap:

In the last post I was thinking about how important avatars [with real photos] are to personalization and trust esp in the era of LinkedIn and Facebook. They are, in fact, super important, especially for virtual world acquaintances who are real world strangers. As noted I went to conference on the east coast and met three people in the real who I "knew" online but had never actually met prior in person. I found these people because of their LinkedIn photo, specifically because their LI photo was an actual face photo and not say, the Colonel from KFC. Simple eh? Yeah, right, says "your Mom". I also said if those people [whom I met] had used an image of an "apple" or "blue haired mohawk warrior princess" as their pic/avatar it would've served no positive purpose for them or for me. Surely we wouldn't have met at all!

Putting a face to a name really matters. As online and real worlds merge Identity andGenuinity especially matter. As far as I am concerned facial recognition is the

Four ideations I can't post and one that isn't ready yet!

So I told myself that I will never post any bicycle related business ideas even if they are not related to my current employer and I am sticking to that.  However I can say that I had four great business ideations today. The catalysts: getting my old bike ready to ride, setting up the burley trailer for my son, riding to brunch at Eldorado Grill, locking up Pooh Bear with the bikes and trailer and riding home much later after a most excellent brunch on the side porch.  It's true, that's all you get! Nothing more than a few key go-by-bike activities.  Those four secret ideas go to my peeps at the grand ole bicycle company.

-now the business ideation that isn't ready yet:

I was thinking about how important avatar's [with real photo's] are to personalization and trust esp in the age of LinkedIn and Facebook. The idea that I can befriend a person through online debate and then end up in their rental car, hitching a ride to Logan, fresh off the end of a conference in the great state of RI is pretty amazing and crazy really.  All that and I had never met the person in the living flesh and somehow was able to pick them out of the conference haystack, say hello and make a create personal connection...plus hitch a free ride 45 miles north!  Now I will stress point this rather bluntly, ALL this happened because of the personal photo/avatar feature.

If that person had used an apple as their icon it would have been no dice for meeting.  Same for those goofy anima avatars. I am all for people expressing their alter egos but it doesn't do much for their favor if their avatar has a mohawk, nose rings, blue skin and tattoo's on their cheeks but in reality that person looks like your everyday average braided leather belt wearing sales schmuck. (you know the guy, in 1997he'd also have a pager or nokia phone strapped to his belt tucked neatly below his gut fat roll)

You get my point, avatars and little images of yourself really matter. They say a lot about who you are, what you represent but more importantly they help people see what you actually look like! In the chance setting you sit down next to a VC and realize they are someone you enjoy following/reading and discussing with you will be better prepared to recognize they are "that person."  And how simple is that, right?!

Now, for real I can't finish this post because I need one photograph. This photograph will be so powerful that you will probably blink-shake_head-open_mouth like the "whaahhzatt!" messenger emoticon. It is a photograph that taught me the power of personalization, the importance of knowing ones audience and the brillianceof the Familiar.  Honestly I texted my sister and asked her to ask my Dad if he had a copy of this photo...somewhere, anywhere! [note they live in Maine, not Wisconsin so I couldn't just drive over and start digging through old dusty boxes]  I asked for any image of this photo, an SMS/MMS quality pic, a pixalated black and white FAX scan send via email would be fine. Heck I'd even take a polaroid via the good old mail company!  But no dice tonight. I could hear my Dad asking, "he wants what...tonight...does he know what time it is???"

In perfect Dad fashion he told my sister that he might look for it tomorrow. She texts back such words of Dad'ness. This means he might actually look for it tomorrow. It also means perhaps the next day or perhaps the next time I call him and bug him. Regardless I can't finish this ideation until I get this old photograph. I can't even begin to explain it and you won't get the full effect without the image so tomorrow or the next day or whenever my dad gets around to looking...perhaps then I will post the ending!

cL