In the early 1980’s Emerson worked with Emery Airfreight, which became Emery Worldwide during this time. As part of the transition, Emery bought about a dozen or so 727’s, their own private fleet similar to Federal Express. However, this was during a national economic downturn, and Emery’s revenues FELL by over 20% during the same time period!
Emerson was brought onboard to reinvigorate the falling sales of all of North Florida and South Georgia…the ONLY salesperson assigned to an 80,000 square mile area. He increased account penetration and upped revenues for the region by 131% during this same time (although the company as a whole continued to slide). When companies like Emery had a large air freight shipment, they would typically transfer the carriage to one of the major airlines. When Emerson began the only “metal” the company had assigned the Jacksonville terminal was a small Beechcraft flying into Jacksonville, the same type of small plane used by thousands of private pilots, able to carry about 2500 lbs. of cargo.
Because Emerson secured a significant number of new freight accounts, especially for inbound freight, in a few months the company had to upgrade to a Convair with six times the capacity. As he continued to grow the volume locally, after 6 months the company made the decision to drop one of their precious new 727’s into Jacksonville to carry over 16 times more capacity than the original Beechcraft.
NO air freight company (or airline) had ever committed a freight plane that large to the Jacksonville market… Even Fed-Ex didn’t have one! He immediately contacted the company’s marketing department and their head of Public Relations to run a campaign in the area. Both department heads “educated” him: because Emery ‘dropped new metal’ into cities all the time, this wasn’t “newsworthy enough” to dedicate any of their resources or time. Besides, company revenues were too tight to do any extra marketing!!
This Is Where It REALLY GOT Interesting!
Maybe this wasn’t big nationally, but Emerson knew this was MAJOR local news! Since corporate wasn’t interested, Emerson took this as a challenge to create a media storm on his own. He started by creating with what has since become known as his “Direct Response Public Relations” or “DRPR” Strategy: Crafting THREE versions of the same release: one short, one medium and one long form with ALL the key points. Some in the media call this the “Goldilocks'” method, because different media have different needs, one is bound to be “just right!” Emerson delivered these to ALL the local media, including FOUR regional television stations, FIFTEEN top radio stations (some with multiple channels and formats), and, in addition to the primary local newspapers, the Florida Times-Union and the Jacksonville Journal, about 14 smaller papers within the North Florida-South Georgia markets. He personally did follow-up calls to each and every media outlet he could, a few each day between sales calls. He also met with the mayor’s office (ask him about his Gatekeeper experience!), the chamber president, and the influential head of the Port Authority, inviting them all to attend the landing of what he dubbed a “Historic Inaugural Flight” at JAX Airport.
Result (You can read the full story from the Business section above — pardon the old photocopy quality!): Emerson got front page coverage in the Business section plus additional articles before, during and after the inaugural flight in ALL the local papers in all the surrounding markets. One of the television stations ran a complete segment for several days, and he did phone interviews with 9 radio stations, which they cut up and ran as sound bytes for about a week around the first landing. Even the mayor’s chief of staff and the head of the Port Authority were there at the airport — at 4:30 a.m. — to see… what? A PLANE LAND at the airport! When the bright red and white Emery 727 landed for the first time a film crew from one of the television stations and a reporter from the Times-Union were on hand to report on this “Epic Flight!”
These and Emerson’s additional public relations efforts afterwards generated over $500,000 in free publicity. And yes, Emerson took the time to craft a series of personalized followup letters & phone calls to all of his existing customers AND new prospects — with each letter including a copy of one of the articles about the new, improved lift available to them. Within a few months the plane’s capacity was filling fast, and Emery Founder John C. Emery even presented Emerson with a special National Recognition Award recognizing his initiative and the success of his campaign. Emery’s marketing department was instructed to mirror Emerson’s outreach each time the company “dropped new metal” into existing markets!
The entire campaign took about 2 solid weeks of focused (sometimes chaotic!) effort (over and above his 25 weekly sales calls, followups and reports!) yet generated dozens of new clients and a burst of pickups from existing ones (that’s what happens when you get to the top of their minds!). It was rushed and quickly produced, but Emerson knows how much MORE valuable a campaign can be when he’s given the luxury of advance planning!
