All right, let's get the show started. Yeah, those who want to grab a seat. I want to make sure we have enough time for the conversation we're looking forward to. So, on behalf of Medill, I want to welcome all of you here to the MFC forum. A warm welcome to the CEO of United, Scott Kirby. Thanks so much for taking the time to be here. Also want to thank Provost Kathleen Hagerty and incoming Provost Eric Litton for being here. Thanks for taking the time and being with us. And a warm welcome to all our students, staff, faculty who are united here from all parts of campus. I don't dare say today the MFC forum looks like United Center, but I won't stretch it that far. It's my absolute pleasure and privilege to welcome all of you here. I know we're looking forward to this conversation. Before we get started, I just want to say a quick thanks to Professor Danielle Robinson Bell and the PR team for making this happen. There are moments like this that we absolutely treasure as higher ed, as students and faculty. So, thanks so much. I'm going to hand it over to Anthony Fleet, an IMC alum from 2017, for his remarks and then we'll move on. Yeah. Thanks.
Well, hello, Northwestern Medill. It's really great to be back on campus. To the students, the faculty, staff, friends, and visitors, welcome and thank you for being here today. As VJ said, my name is Anthony Fleet. I'm a graduate of Medill's IMC full-time program, class of 2017, and I'm a current employee at United Airlines. I'm on our corporate communications team and specifically operations communications. And even more specifically, I'm responsible for communicating to and engaging our frontline employees, namely our flight attendants. So our job is to keep them engaged and informed. Just a quick fun fact about me and why I'm on stage today. So almost 10 years ago now, I actually flew my first flight on United to come to Medill to visit when I got accepted as a student. So it's kind of crazy how I'm here 10 years later. And what's even funnier about that flight is I didn't know anything about aviation. I didn't know anything about what goes into flying. My godfather was a little bit of an old school kind of guy. He told me that I should wear a suit. And so I was like, 'All right, I'll put a suit on to fly.' And so going through TSA, I have a full suit on. I have to do this. And I was just utterly confused and just kind of perplexed about the whole ecosystem of flying. And I remember even being on a flight, we experienced some turbulence. And I was just like, well, like if we go down, like it was just meant to be. Like I just wasn't meant to fly. Thankfully that wasn't the case, especially since now I work for United. It was great. So probably my first four or five flights I wore suits and then I quickly learned that I don't need to wear a suit every time I fly. So anyway, it's an honor for me to be here to be a part of this event featuring two brands that have been very important to me throughout the past decade. And as a communicator I'm always mindful of my choice of words. And so I'm deliberately choosing the word brand as opposed to organization, institution or some other similar word. And brand is a word I heard a lot during my time here on campus. You know, I'm coming out of undergrad. I'm taking this program. I'm thinking I'm going to learn more about communications. And what I heard a lot was, you know, brand this and brand that and brand brand. So I was like, okay, this is interesting. This is new. And what I appreciate was that when you think about a brand, you're challenged to think beyond a particular product or service that a company offers. You're really challenged to think about the brand and how the power of brand can drive loyalty. And so if you've been following United and if you've been listening to Scott, our guest speaker, CEO, Scott Kirby, he talks a lot about brand loyalty. And that's one of his top priorities. He says it really anywhere he speaks to anybody he's talking to in any form that he's in. And he talks about just how to continue to drive brand loyalty. And you'll likely hear him say it today when he's talking with Dean Charles Whitaker. And so as communicators, the concept of brand enables us to think both artistically and scientifically about the qualities of our profession. Because brand is that sort of, you know, that squishy word that you can put definitions to it. But there's a lot of emotion that's tied to it as well. And as communicators, how can we apply that to what we're doing with no matter which brand we're supporting? Excuse me. And so whether you're a student in the room, a working professional, you'll be treated to a really thoughtful dialogue between two very accomplished professionals. Both Dean Charles Whitaker and Scott Kirby have been in their respective fields for multiple decades. I've had the pleasure of kind of sitting and observing how they lead their respective brands. And just seeing how thoughtful they are, just how personable they are and really like they drive a lot of inspiration and optimism for the respective brands that they are really responsible for. And so I think we're really in for a treat to have a lot of fun to listen and learn from both Scott Kirby and Dean Charles Whitaker. And with that, please join me in welcoming Dean Charles Whitaker and CEO of United Airlines, Scott Kirby.
Scott, thank you so much for joining us. I can't tell you what an honor and a privilege it is to have you here and to have all of you here as well. Thank you so much. We are going to talk about storytelling and communication. And I want to start by asking, you know, I think it's hard to quantify the ROI on communications. A lot of times I think leaders think of it as a nice to have and not a need to have. They don't really think about communications and storytelling until the proverbial crap hits the fan. And then they're looking for the communications team to find those magical words that will extricate them from whatever this situation is. How do you think about storytelling and how do you quantify its value for the organization?
Well, thanks Charles and first thanks for having me here and I love being in a room with people who want to communicate, like to communicate. So many people are like, 'Oh, I'm afraid to say anything because it might be wrong.' But being with a group of people that want to communicate, that's a huge asset if you keep doing it for the rest of your careers. I guess the honest answer to that is I don't think about the ROI on communication at all. It's the wrong way to think about it. It is a necessary thing to make a company great and to do great things. It enables everything else. And by the way, I'm a math guy. I mean, my undergraduate degree is in operations research. My graduate degree is in operations research. So I am a math guy, but I think even on a broader point, people try to put an ROI on way too many things in corporate America. And you guys, you know, Charles talked about or you Anthony talked about building a brand. Building a brand is not something you do one ROI investment at a time. You're making a whole bunch hundreds of decisions that ultimately add up to a great company which delivers great earnings, which employees love and customers love. If you make employees love your company and they make the customers love the company, the ROI is going to take care of itself. And I really believe I say I have the easiest job of anyone at United because my only responsibility is to create an airline that our employees are proud of because if they're proud, they're going to want you to feel the same way when they get on the airplane. When they're out representing United, they're going to be the best advocates. They're going to take care of everything else. When they stand up like Anthony did, they can talk sincerely from the heart about what it means to work at United. You can tell that they're proud. And if you do that, the finances all take care of itself.
A lot of CEOs however are very uncomfortable being the chief storyteller. They do not want to stand up and sort of advocate for the brand. You are quite different in that regard. You are out front a lot talking about the brand being the flag bearer for the company. Why? What motivates you to do that?
Well, I like it. So that helps. I joke this up in a Wall Street Journal story not too long ago. I joke in a room with a bunch of airline CEOs that we all crave the spotlight. The only difference between me and them is that I'm willing to admit it. But most people there, many people, especially by the time you get to be in the executive ranks, whether it's CEO or others, you've done it by avoiding the big mistake. And so they've sort of been trained over their careers to avoid mistakes. Which means, you know, don't make any risky decisions, just follow the conservative path, but also means be very careful about communicating. And I think they make a mistake, people make a mistake when they go to media training. Because what they really train you to do in media training is don't communicate. They train you to memorize talking points and you can watch people on TV that aren't comfortable being on TV and you can see their brains processing like how am I going to say my talking points in answer to this question instead of listening to the question and just engaging and saying what they actually think. And so they are reluctant to do it but I think it can be the starting point for a brand and the truth is the CEO has a louder voice than anyone. I mean just because of the title like fair or otherwise like you know my voice is 10 times what anyone else's voice can be if I'm willing to go out and use it and by the way it enables everyone else. So our comms team like we have the best corporate communications team. I think of any fortune 500 company in the US not just airlines we have the best corporate communications team but it enables them to go out and communicate and communicate effectively and be listened to get audiences with people that matter and talk to them. It empowers them to actually go say something. You know we communicate a lot more than anyone else not just me but our team does. And so the CEO can do that. And there's, you know, we talked about brands. You guys talk about brands here. And people normally think about brands as advertising. The most effective kind of brand building you can do is actually free because it's communication. That's just way more effective than because people are cynical about advertising. But if you're out communicating and they're hearing other independent objective journalists say XYZ about you or about your company that can enable advertising and other kind of brand building activities to be much more powerful. So for all of you in your careers, if you forget to be the CEO, be communicators, but if you're in the communications department advising CEOs, like convince them to step out, you know, jump in the deep end of the pool every once in a while and try to communicate because it can be really empowering for a company.
At the same time, these are really fraught political times. The divisions are deep. People are looking to brands oftentimes to see whether or not they align with their sociopolitical beliefs and when they don't, they punish those brands, right? And they're looking for signals at really wrenching moments, the killing of Charlie Kirk or George Floyd or whatever. How does a company or a brand communicate its values without sending a political message that is going to alienate half the people?
Yes, exactly. So I see this through a different lens and I think we've done a pretty good job of it at United and first I start from a perspective I'm very centrist. You know, I've voted for Republicans, I've voted for Democrats. I truly am independent. And I don't like what they do on the far left or the far right. Much of it I dislike. And so I start from a perspective of being a centrist. I also read extensively. And by the way, many journalism people in here like I hate the demise of journalism. Bravo. Like getting your news on social media, like all you hear is like I actively seek out, you know, I read the Wall Street Journal, New York Times every day, lots of other stuff, too. And I read the opinion pages and I actively seek out news and writing from people that I respect that disagree with me. I don't need someone to tell me what I already think. I need people to challenge what I think and to come up with new ideas. And I've found that almost everyone, including politicians, even the ones that you may hate. If you sit down and listen to them, they're not coming from a bad place. They may have a different view than I do or than you do. But they're trying to do what they think is the right thing. And if you can see people through the lens of they're trying to do the right thing. They may disagree with you and try to understand, be empathetic, understand what they're saying. It gives you a different perspective which also then frames how I think of these otherwise what would be controversial decisions and I think of things that we're going to say or do and it's mostly me that are saying or doing them as I need to be able to explain what I'm doing to both sides of the aisle and feel good about it. And that usually means not taking a partisan position, even though sometimes I get accused of it. I mean, Tucker Carlson has gone after me three different times. And, you know, he generates like 100,000 emails. They shut my email down when he goes after me. I've had Laura Loomer's gone after me, on the right. So, I've had people on the left go after me. So, I've had it on both sides, but I try to think of things that you can explain it to both people. I'll give you a couple of examples. COVID was one. We were the first big company really kind of the only company of size that had a COVID mandate and we got 99.7% of our employees vaccinated and so I had to and I still sometimes have to explain to politicians why we did who start very in my face very hostile about it and what I tell them though is airline safety like safety is sacrosanct at an airline and you know our safety standards are an order of magnitude higher than any other company any other industry around. And I concluded personally that this was a safety issue and that I couldn't put a pilot in the left seat with a pilot that was unvaccinated. I couldn't put that person at risk. It was wrong. And it was a safety issue. And once I concluded it was a safety issue, it was no choice. To me it didn't matter what the consequences were. It was about safety and we never compromise on safety and I wasn't going to do it. And by and large everyone, even people that don't like the decision, respect why you did that. You can explain it to them. We've got another program called the Aviate Academy, which I'm really proud of, out in Arizona where we give what's called ab initio training to pilots, people that have, you don't have to have ever flown before. And we give you the first initial training that you can get and you got to pass all kinds of FAA tests. You got all kind, you know, you got like 10 hoops you got to jump through before, you know, six or seven years later, you can become a United Airlines pilot. But we made a point when we opened that academy to recruit people from, you know, historically black colleges and Hispanics in aviation and women in aviation. And we did that partly because today 92% of the pilots in the country are white men. Lots of history for that. Like I went to the Air Force Academy like I know lots of pilots. Lots of historical reasons that it is white men. But it's a great career and it's something that we should give opportunity to everyone. Another thing that I believe strongly it's one of the I think this is the greatest country on earth. Greatest country in history. But one of the things that makes us great is it's about the only place on the planet where everyone can have opportunity to rise above and accomplish great things. But we as a society and particularly as leaders have an obligation to try to help people get to the first rung on the ladder. That's the hardest rung to get to for a lot of people. And I tell them when they come to the United like, I'm going to we're going to help you get on the first rung. The rest of them are going to be up to you. You're going to have to work hard. You're going to have to be great to do it, but we're going to help you get on the first rung. And that's what the Aviate Academy does. We're super selective. Less than half a percent the application less than half a percent, way more than any Ivy League school or Northwestern. I think I don't know your application rates. But way more selective. We give them the best training. So like our graduates like top 1% in the country like amazing people that go there but because we've said you know it's 70% women and people of color and because of that people say oh you're not hiring the best and you know this is a DEI initiative and sometimes so I explain all the facts to them but the point that I've eventually realized is the most impactful with people is ultimately saying you know I went to the Air Force Academy I wanted to be a pilot and an astronaut my whole life but the very first time I walked onto an airplane was when I was 17 years old flying off to the United States Air Force Academy. The US Air Force saw enough in me to give me a chance and give me an education and give me a chance. We're giving the same opportunity to these people. And that's kind of hard to argue with. And if you do things in a way that you know you can describe it to both sides, and feel good about it, you're going to probably be okay.
But what about when you're not? I mean, there are still folks who are going to say, you know, you got this DEI program and...
Yeah, I mean, if you've explained it to them and they still don't, I just don't worry about it. It's a minority. Just move on.
Fair. Do you craft those communications? What is the internal workings like in terms of developing the story?
So, anything of substance that I communicate, I take the pen on first. It gets edited. Usually, the legal team sends it back to me. And they've struck out everything that I want to say, so I put it back in. And they take one shot, they let it go. But almost everything that of substance that gets communicated, I write, it needs to be in my voice. I'm the one that has to be out talking about it. It needs to be in my voice. I want to describe it the way I want to say it. So, I write almost all of it.
So, hypothetically, say there's a major airline that's considering merging with another airline.
We I already said it in public. We tried to buy American. I want to fix them. I'm sorry. I don't Please don't quote that. But there are you know...
By the way when you communicate all the time to say what you think sometimes it pops out. There's lots of chatter about that concerns about what that might do to pricing and competition. That's a narrative that can easily get out of your control. What do you do about it?
So that was one you know that's a good example in communication. You know what we did was totally different than what most companies would do. And so it is true that we were I talked to the American Airlines CEO about an idea to merge with them and they sort of dismissed it out of hand as we couldn't get regulatory approval and then I did some other stuff which has been reported but to get myself convinced that we could get regulatory approval and but then it leaked and you know there were enough people in Washington that knew about it that we knew it might leak. Leaking was bad for us like because when it leaks like we can't really tell our story because you can't go out it's hard to go out and say yes we tried to do this and the opposition can all gear up and say this will be anti-competitive and everyone that doesn't want the deal can gear up to say it. So I was we were disappointed that it leaked and that's what happened. American came out and pretty publicly said that they were not going to do it and you know really kind of poisoned the well for the current management team at least to get a deal done because once you've said it's anti-competitive it's sort of hard to go back and later say oh no change my mind it's going to be good and I knew that it would be competitive because I knew the merger what we were trying to do was different than traditional mergers in airline industry have all been about subtraction they've been done from a place where the companies were struggling and they were going to cut jobs and they were going to cut unprofitable flying and they were going to shrink and they were going to do a bunch of negative bunch of subtraction. This was about addition because United has created a brand loyal airline where customers choose to fly United. I have lots of great data from around the country everywhere we fly. We've won huge market share because we've created a better airline and that's what customers want. Customers don't just want air travel as a commodity. They do care about price. But value matters too. You know, the lowest priced airline just went out of business because they were horrible to customers. And customers hated them. That's why they went out of business. And customers care about value. And all the stuff that we're doing at United for technology and product and reliability and service matters to customers and customers have chosen overwhelmingly that they rather fly United than, you know, our competitor here in Chicago, then our different competitor in Denver, than a different competitor in San Francisco. Overwhelmingly chosen that customers want and that's the vision that I have is to really expand that expand it globally and so I know because I'm the guy that gets to decide what we're going to do. I know for 100% certainty that it would be better for customers because the whole reason to do it is to create a great airline for customers. So I was 100% certain that would be true and I really disliked that the narrative had become that this was anti-competitive. It was sort of all the old way of looking at it. And so I decided to draft a note. I drafted it. My wife was at Amanjiri for her birthday weekend, so she was a little bit annoyed while she went to the spa. I drafted the note. But I did it while she was at the spa. I drafted the note on Saturday and the team scurried around with it a little bit and on Monday we put it out. But I really I wanted to explain what was in my head and the reason I thought it would be good for consumers. And I wanted to do that.
What's the response been?
The response has been really positive. From everyone. You know I live in Dallas because I was the president of American Airlines. So I've never moved I have a house here but I never moved the family and so and I'm at you know this has happened every time I've been out basically since it happened. You know kids soccer game. I have still four young kids at home. And so I spend my Saturdays and Sundays as an Uber driver shuttling kids around and standing at soccer fields. But every time I'm there, you know, a pilot or a flight attendant from American Airlines comes up to me and says, 'Can you please, you know, is it could it still happen? Like we really need it, you know, like so it makes me feel good.' I mean total strangers. Customers tell me that all the time. Our employees tell me like it really it struck a chord with people who would like to have a great US airline that it's also about being global and competing with Asian and Middle Eastern airlines. I think it struck a chord with sort of everyone I know except the people that sit in the suite at American which matters because they at the moment get a veto vote.
If you're a betting man, what do you think would happen?
Well, I mean, I think it's probably unlikely. We have to have something this big and transformational. You got to have a willing partner. And we have a clearly unwilling partner. So, we're doing great things at United. You know, we're going to keep doing the stuff that we're doing. And we'll probably get to a similar end point in terms of size and customer. It'll take a little longer and it'll, frankly, it'll come at the expense of our competitors. They'll be smaller because they're competitors but they're just not competitive with United.
Scott, you were also very critical of Spirit before it closed and the sort of low-cost airlines and that could have been risky sort of being out there so critical of that business model. Any regrets or thoughts or...
No, I mean this is like got to be who you are, too. That's another point like and I just thought it was horrible like I hated the way they treated customers and we all got tarred with it. Like I go to Washington DC and you know have meetings of people and they'll say stuff and like sometimes senators are like you know that's not United like right like and you know I just like I couldn't stand the way they treated customers. I mean it was like it was disrespectful to customers and look to their credit they tried to change at the end but they just had gone way too far. You know they'd gone over the cliff. They were falling. They hadn't hit the bottom yet, but they were already over the cliff and it was too late before they tried to change. And the point of all that is we're in business for our customers and if our customers love us, we're going to be successful. And if our customers hate us, we're going to fail. And we should focus on customers. And when other people don't, I'm willing to say it.
