Gary Leopold, ISM Boston

………

According to ISM Boston‘s website, Gary Leopold, their CEO, “not only eats, sleeps and breathes travel, he knows it from the client side.” After having a conversation with him, one would appreciate the completeness of the sentence – and the man.

Not only has Gary led ISM Boston – a niche travel marketing firm – for almost 25 years, he has also been involved in the strategic planning for all accounts, one of them being Emirates Airline. ISM Boston recently won the Emirates account for North America after a review. He was gracious enough to speak to us about the unique challenges faced by airline brands and how they can succeed – both in the US and abroad.

In essence, Gary feels that airlines need to give autonomy to marketing agencies and push them to innovate – like Emirates does. Over the five years ISM Boston has had the Emirates account, they seem to have surpassed their own expectations on the quality of work produced for Emirates.

When asked whether US based airlines can ever regain their former glory, Gary believes that airlines here need to ensure consistency across product, service and the brands will become stronger. Moreover, they need listen to their customers, and come up with innovative ways (and probably new business models) to address their needs. When asked to recall an incident, Gary gets animated while describing how he doesn’t mind sitting on the tarmac on a JetBlue flight, since there is seat-back entertainment and he doesn’t need to miss his ball game. You can watch the full 20 mins video interview below.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Foreign Airlines Thrive as U.S. Flounders
• Olympiacos nabs sponsorship deal with Emirates
• First regular A380 service to the US announced

• Branding Head at Burson-Marsteller wants airlines to “stop being the Greyhound of the skies”
• How will Emirates ensure high levels of service across its A380 fleet? VP Nigel Page explains
• SimpliFlying is “aviation website of the week” (and more accolades)
• Jet Airways’ VP of Sales & Marketing shares what it takes to build a strong airline brand in the US
• Conde Nast Traveler 2008 airline rankings prove that product is the brand

I’m delighted to share the news with you that Interbrand’s Brandchannel.com has just published the white paper on airline branding, “Six steps to building a swashbuckling brand,” authored by me. Brandchannel.com is the leading online exchange about all things branding. Hence it is an honor for the it to be selected as the featured white paper for last week. You can read it online or download the paper here. I’d love to have your comments and feedback.

Thanks for all your support.

Regards,
Shashank

• SimpliFlying is “aviation website of the week” (and more accolades)
• Southwest Airlines’ President Colleen Barrett confirms in interview that happy employees make a great brand
• Top 10 Articles of 2011
• Asian Brand in Chaos: Japan Airlines files for bankruptcy, what’s in store for Delta and Skyteam? As shared Live on CNBC
• Coming soon: SimpliFlying Buzz, the first airline marketing and branding portal on the web