Chief Marketing Officer, Delta Air Lines
How Modern Marketing is Enabling Delta Air Lines to Revolutionize Travel — Marketing Art and Science
On this episode of Marketing Art and Science, host Lisa Martin is joined by Delta Air Lines’ CMO Alicia Tillman for a conversation on how modern marketing is enabling Delta to revolutionize travel globally. Together, we explore the massive impact Delta’s MarTech stack is having on the business and dive into the emerging technologies Delta is deploying that are already profoundly influencing the personalized passenger experience.
Their discussion covers:
Alicia Tillman's role as CMO of Delta Air Lines and the company's recent recognition for innovation and customer experience at events like...
About Alicia Tillman
In a May 2024 podcast, Delta Air Lines CMO Alicia Tillman discussed the airline's use of technology to personalize the passenger experience. She described a "healthy tech stack" of industry-leading platforms and custom-built solutions that feed passenger data to handheld devices carried by flight attendants, enabling personalized notes for milestones such as birthdays or million-mile flights. Tillman also noted that Delta offers free Wi‑Fi to SkyMiles members, which she said "enables us to unlock personalization at scale." She added that the airline is exploring machine learning algorithms to analyze travel history and predict "next best destination" suggestions for customers. Tillman addressed Delta's response to customer backlash over changes to the SkyMiles loyalty program, stating that the airline "scanned every single letter" and "applied a lot of emotion against the data" before recalibrating the program. She characterized the company's "Keep climbing" motto as a reminder that "you really can never stand still" and that Delta must remain entrepreneurial. Tillman also recounted an anecdote in which a pilot ran nearly two miles to return a passenger's forgotten laptop, calling it "just one of countless examples" of employees going "above and beyond."
Transcript (22 segments)
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Lisa Martin0:11
and Science I'm CMO adviser show host Tech correspondent Lisa Martin and I'm so thrilled to be hosting this new weekly show that's really going to explore this fusion of artistry and science that today defines modern marketing. On each show my guests and I are going to dissect this ever evolving landscape where each insight really opens doors to fresh opportunities for success. Today's guest is none other than Alicia Tillman, the CMO of Delta Airlines, and to say Alicia has an impressive background is an understatement. Let me walk you through it in the next minute or so. As I mentioned, currently the CMO of Delta Airlines, but she brings so much great B2B and B2C experience to the marketing role and to brands in general. She's a very dynamic C-level leader with... where she completely restructured the entire marketing organization and built this ecosystem of partners and cultural influencers to scale the brand. In fact, at SAP, Alicia led the company to become one of the 20 most valuable brands in the world, with its brand value increasing more than 18.5 billion during her leadership. She's now at the helm of one of the world's largest airlines. I'm sure many of you are Delta flyers, SkyMiles members, and like I mentioned, she brings this really unique mix of B2B and B2C marketing and operating executive expertise and board experience. Please welcome Alicia Tillman to the program. Alicia, great to have you.
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Alicia Tillman1:53
Thank you so much for having me today, Lisa. I'm so excited to be here.
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Lisa Martin2:11
We're going to have a... this is the about phase. We're going to learn about Alicia. She just came from the stage at South by Southwest 2024. We're going to talk a little bit about that and the huge impact that Delta Airlines made there, even in the noise of entertainment and tech companies. We're then going to be talking about the martech in action at Delta Airlines. What does it look like? How does it enable pilots, gate attendants, flight attendants, customer service to really deliver that personalized passenger experience that we all want? Thirdly, we're going to talk about emerging technologies. There's some very cool things Delta is doing with 5G, for example, AI, that's really going to drive this connectivity that we all want, whether we are on terra firma or in the air. And the last section of this show is called Fail to Fab, and that's going to... into a very favorable and fabulous marketing and passenger experience. Okay, with that said, Alicia, you were just on the stage a number of times at South by Southwest. I was so jealous, I wish I could have been there, but I wanted the audience to know something that you shared with me from The Wall Street Journal CMO Today. And guys, get this: they said the hottest spot of the weekend didn't come from a tech or an entertainment company, it came from 99-year-old Delta. Is that awesome or what? Lines to enter its multi-story lounge and grab this vintage style swag that I would love to get my hands on that they were handing out. The lines were around the corner for days. Alicia, talk about South by Southwest, the customer experience that this 99-year-old history organization...
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Alicia Tillman4:12
South by Southwest Austin is such an important market for us. We're continuing to grow our presence, we've been growing significantly year over year. And South by... I mean, it's just such a beautiful convergence of so many life experiences, be it music or film, comedy, interactive, which is the business aspect of South by. And when we think about the evolving nature of the consumer, these worlds are all colliding. And consumers today, they want to invest in brands that have this ability to bring all of these experiences in life together. And so it felt like the perfect... lounge that we built. And we wanted to bring the same level of experience that so many love when they fly with Delta into now an experience on their journey. And so we created this lounge experience that was only open to SkyMiles members, though you did have the ability to sign up for a SkyMiles member on site. And over the few days that we were there, we welcomed over 5,000 SkyMiles members that had the opportunity to not only interact with our products and the experience that they've come to know and expect now in this lounge experience...
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Lisa Martin6:10
that make Delta as special as it is. I love that you mentioned two words I want to pivot on, and that's evolution and people. Talk to us about your evolution. I mentioned to the audience in our introduction that you are an expert in B2B and B2C marketing. I mentioned SAP, of course. Now we're talking about you as the CMO of Delta. Talk a little bit about your ascent to the role and your journey to the role of the CMO, and what excites you about being a leader in these modern marketing times.
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Alicia Tillman6:42
To be able to have experience in both B2B and consumer, you rarely find that. Oftentimes you sort of go into a segment or into a particular function and you're sort of pegged as that, if you will. But my ability to... spent 11 years at American Express, so also a very, very significant both B2B and consumer brand. I feel very fortunate. I have always had this unbelievable curiosity and desire to sort of take really kind of complex ideas or ways in which you operate, almost sort of like if you think about it as a Rubik's Cube, your ability to solve something, and the reward that comes with that. Companies, one of the biggest complaints often that they have internally is we do so much and our value proposition is super complicated, we have so many products, we have so many services. The beauty in that, and I think of which... it to help drive business success and customer loyalty. And when I had said early on in my career that that's what was appealing to me, I had great sponsors and mentors that said you need to pursue a career in marketing, because that's really what marketing is all about.
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Lisa Martin8:30
Yeah, I love that you're speaking to my heart. That ability to take and dissect the complex and make it digestible, understandable, relatable, personalized is something that speaks to me as well. It's so important to be able to do that. I love though looking at orgs like Delta, 99 years young as I mentioned, massive. Along the way, digital transformation but also cultural transformation. Something that I read about Delta that I love is that for the fifth time in recent years... and shaping society through innovation. Talk about Delta's appetite and what you're doing to really drive the cultural and digital transformation that are necessary for that superior passenger experience.
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Alicia Tillman9:26
Well, we're humbled by the recognition from Fast Company. They often recognize almost kind of startup organizations. If you see the companies that predominantly take up the awards in Fast Company, they're startups, they're organizations that have been in business for less than 10 years. And here you have... climbing and keep climbing. Emerged from some really dark periods of Delta many years ago. And while at times we said, okay, we've climbed out of that, let's now pivot to a new rally cry, we realized that we were never going to do that because keep climbing is more symbolic to this idea that you really can never stand still. And in a world of choice and change and evolving consumer needs and how loyalty sort of shifts and the requirements of that, we always have to be entrepreneurial, we always have to be thinking with fresh ideas, modern ideas... product and membership benefits that are really going to drive loyalty for life. And the understanding that you're never going to stop climbing. Yeah, you may have to sometimes climb out of something, but it's also about how to kind of stay ahead of change and also be part of leading change at the same time.
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Lisa Martin11:36
Leading change. I love that. Keep climbing. Obviously I think that's a metaphor for life. As you're talking about that, I think we could all use that in our Christian lives as well. What's your favorite, before we wrap up this kind of background about section, your favorite passenger story that just shines a light on Delta, its objectives to support the...
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Alicia Tillman12:10
meeting someone new and I tell them that I work for Delta Airlines. 10 out of 10 times, Lisa, immediately that person wants to launch into a story about Delta. And they're always fantastic. It's usually a story about an incredible experience that they had with a product or with one of our people, and it's always about our people. And I'll share one story that we recently showcased at one of our leadership events. And anytime we have an event, Ed Bastian, our CEO, he always pulls out an email and wants to share the contents of the email that he read, which... industry. And he was sitting on the plane and he pulled out his laptop to do some work, and then the meal service came, so he took his laptop and he put it in the seatback pocket while he ate his meal. And I think you can maybe figure out what's going to happen here. Well, he forgot about his laptop. When we landed, he deplaned quickly and he had on his mind, he had a very, very quick connection to make, so he had to run multiple gates. And in fact, he described it as what felt like a two-mile run from one gate to the next in Minneapolis to catch his connecting... of him recognizing this. Come running onto the plane was the pilot from his previous flight, who at the end of the experience was walking through, saw the laptop peeking out of the seatback and said, oh my goodness. Quickly found where he was going next, and this pilot proceeded to sprint nearly two miles of what they both described, wow, to try to meet that flight to give it back to this passenger. And here's a pilot who didn't know who he was, he knew him as simply a customer of Delta. And I tell you, Lisa, this is just one of countless examples...
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Lisa Martin15:12
That is huge and fantastic. I want to... that's a perfect segue into topic number two, which is martech in action. Talk about the marketing technology stack that you have and how it enables pilots to do what was just done in that scenario, or gate agents or flight attendants or customer service, to really personalize that passenger experience in good times and challenging times.
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Alicia Tillman15:34
It's a great question because listen, we live in a world where customers expect personalized experiences. They're choosing brands that know them, speak to them, and are going to deliver an experience that just sticks with them and is so memorable. So we have a lot of... happen, and there needs to be a really strong process that surrounds any technology that we have. And so we have a very healthy tech stack that is comprised of both industry leading platforms as well as some custom built solutions that we've designed as well, so that we can have this very seamless, highly personalized experience. So for example, you may notice even in flight, the flight attendants are carrying what looks like a handheld device. That handheld device is armed with a tremendous amount of passenger information that passengers have shared... honeymoon. We feed all of that data into the devices that our inflight staff is carrying, with the intention and we train them on ways in which they can enable this data. And it can be everything from a personalized note to welcome someone. You know, if they're a Delta 360 member, oftentimes they'll be personalized notes from either the flight attendant or even the pilot, and certainly if they're celebrating a birthday or a milestone event. So there's technology that provides that information, and then we of course train our teams on how best to deliver that... this is sort of a seamless platform that kind of connects that entire experience from when you're searching to your booking to your inflight, postflight, or even touch points along your journey as well. There's a really strong tapestry of technology partners that we use to help enable that, but it's all pulled from a really consistent foundational layer of data, if you will, that helps to feed that sort of seamless and very connected journey that we have across the travel ribbon.
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Lisa Martin18:51
The connected part is critical, and it's there. You just did such a great job describing what we want... to landing, etc., with the artistry that is what those enabled employees can do with the data to make that experience even better and more relevant. I love that. What a great hybridization of artistry and science that Delta is actually delivering.
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Alicia Tillman19:30
Yeah, and I'll say just a couple things to sort of build on the art and science approach a bit. The art piece, in terms of how we think about it in marketing, it's really... I mean, we help to shape the mindset. It's the creative and these sort of personalized experiences that we know we want to deliver to our customers. And the... piece really revolves around this data centric approach that we have. And so it's data that enables us to target more effectively, so that we are in fact appealing to this idea of personalization. And personalization in the way we think about it has a lot to do with relevancy. So the more relevant our content is, the more effectively our customers engage with it. And it's a very strong ingredient in our ability to not only anticipate customer needs but to also... that, and our technology helps to deliver it. And then number two, you need to make sure that the message that you are communicating is in fact connected and relevant enough so that it is in fact meeting those sort of requirements around personalization that customers have today. And that's another way in which, let's say, the science or the data aspect of it is the most relevant. And then it's really then down to our superpower, which is making sure that our people are really accessing and using both the art and the science to really deliver that kind of core strength. And as we would... have at Delta.
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Lisa Martin22:10
I love that. Authenticity is so critical. No matter what the person is traveling for, the group is traveling for, that authenticity, being genuine, it just goes so far. And it seems like that's part of the superpower at Delta as well. Want to move into our third section here as we wrap up, and that's looking at some of the emerging technologies. I mentioned some of the accolades and the honors that Delta was recently recognized with by Fast Company. Another thing that was recognized by... is its Wi-Fi revolution that's working to ensure that travel is connected. I think we all have this expectation. When you talk and I talked about the personalization, the relevance, the connectivity, but we just need to be connected whether we're on... that's free. Huge word there. Presented by T-Mobile to all of its entire global fleet. So this is what you guys are working on doing here, is connectivity at a scale that we haven't seen before. And from what I've read, the technicians, the tech experts at Delta have really navigated this extreme inflight complexity, connectivity wise, to distribute satellite signals to customers so that as they move about the aircraft, as the aircraft moves about the globe, they're connected. Talk about the technology at a high level that's driving that, and some of the emerging technologies, maybe it's AI, maybe it's 5G, that are really catalysts towards making this connected experience a...
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Alicia Tillman24:11
effective, most efficient self that they can bring forward. And Wi-Fi is probably, especially when you're flying, it is the one thing that's necessary to be able to help achieve this feeling of efficiency and effectiveness as much as possible, especially when you're traveling on business. And so we took this approach and we introduced it at the early part of last year that said, you know what if Wi-Fi is the gateway? What can it potentially unlock? And so we said we're going to give it away for free, because for us that is... particular. And so we're in process still of rolling out free Wi-Fi across our entire fleet. Beginning to focus on not only finalizing all of our domestic fleet, but then also beginning to support it internationally as well. And then when you unlock SkyMiles through the introduction of free Wi-Fi, it then unlocks really unique and special content that we've curated with partners like T-Mobile only for those that have signed up for free Wi-Fi through Delta. And so T-Mobile, the types of subscriptions that they offer to Sky... have all these beautiful partnerships. Walmart Plus is one of our newer partners that, if we can give you Wi-Fi, then we can give you this sort of unlock into content personalization, which is something that is top of mind for consumers. Give me something different, give me something unique, give me access to things that I can otherwise not get access to unless I'm a customer of Delta. And so that's the real thinking behind it. It's appealing to customer needs and giving them something unique that just appeals to them in ways that we know they're most interested in.
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Lisa Martin26:50
I love that, and how technology is really a catalyst for that experience of really driving the...
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Alicia Tillman27:12
wouldn't be a conversation on emerging technologies if I didn't talk about artificial intelligence and generative AI in particular. The use cases around that are definitely still emerging, and Delta has had a really long history of leveraging AI, machine learning, chatbots across various facets of our operations that work in support of delivering customer experience as well as operational efficiency. So there's some newer predictive models like next best destination as an example, where we are looking at employing machine learning algorithms to really... experience. When I'm trying to figure out where to take my next vacation, we spend countless hours researching or talking to friends or family. Yeah, but based on my history and what I've prioritized in past travel destinations, and looking at similar offerings by destination, to be able to serve up recommendations using predictive modeling that is fueled by AI and machine learning, these are amazing things that we can think about offering. And talk about really leaning into... going to, they're going to be replacing human interaction, and it's not the case in the way we see it. It's about how do we augment and make the experience more meaningful by being able to help travelers more than we maybe have the ability to have helped them in the past by leveraging these technologies, which is really exciting for us.
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Lisa Martin29:32
Exactly. And you're shining the light on how emerging technologies like AI and gen AI can be utilized for such amazing positive use cases, and I think the world needs to hear more of that. Last question for you, and final final section, Fail to Fab. Share a story, if you will, Alicia, of a marketing initiative that went awry that you all saw, looked at... experience of our most loyal customers. And when we rolled out these changes, our members quickly let us know that these were not expected changes, and it really felt like an erosion in a lot of ways of their trust and their loyalty in terms of the things that we changed. And so we had thousands of letters, Lisa, from members that we had received over a really short span of time. And so we said, you know what, let's go through and read every single letter. What are the challenges to help inform what we want to readjust as a result of this? And so we scanned every single... stage here, because all the data would point us to your clubs are overcrowded, or you haven't differentiated enough across the tiers because we relaxed a lot of things during COVID, as many companies did. And so any data model would point you to a lot of the changes that we made, but what it didn't allow for was the emotional reaction that is also a big part of how you make decisions in business. And so as a result of that, we applied a lot of emotion against the data, and we recalibrated and we made some really necessary adjustments. And we were really transparent in our process and our... will tell you, customers applauded it. There were still changes that people didn't like, but on the whole they understood it more, and they definitely felt that we responded more emotionally because that's how our customers reacted to the change. And so they felt as though we operated more with our hearts when we went back and looked at this the second time, and that was rewarded quite significantly from our customers. Data plus emotion, what a great concept.
And obviously what you were able to do there, leveraging the technology and the human side, which is I think how most folks should be thinking about AI and gen AI, as them coming together to deliver this...
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Alicia Tillman33:10
much for joining me on the program today. It's been outstanding hearing Delta's story. I will never look at Delta the same again. I will look at it as a technology company that fuels personalized experiences with transparency and connected experiences. We thank you so much for your time being on the show. It's been great to have you.
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Lisa Martin33:29
Thank you, it's been great to be with all of you today. Excellent. We want to thank the audience for watching. This is Marketing Art and Science. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. We'll be back next week with a new show. See you then.