@Gadling picks up on the @GearDiary account of the Scottevest vs. Delta Baggage Fee Controversy, and concludes with some clear lessons

Scottevest vs. Delta magazine - who is telling the truth (and who cares)?

http://www.gadling.com/2010/10/12/scottevest-vs-delta-magazine-who-is-telling-the-truth-and-w/

by Scott Carmichael (RSS feed) on Oct 12th 2010 at 12:30PM

Earlier this month, we made mention of an odd incident between Scottevest and the Delta Airlines inflight magazine. Apparently, Scottevest had sent Delta an ad for their magazine that told passengers how their products could help you save on luggage fees. Delta didn't like the ad, and had it rejected. Scottevest went on the defense, took the battle online, and the rest is history. Or so you'd think. 

After the brouhaha died down, some sites started to do what many of us had failed to invest any time in - check with Delta for their side of the story. Our good friend (and occassional Gadling blogger) Chris Elliott spoke with the publisher for the magazine, and listened to what they had to say. Bottom line from that story was this part:

When I saw the second ad on Friday, I looked at the headline, and it said, "Beat the system." And I said, "I'm not comfortable with that headline." Beat the system? This is a vest that you're going to go through security with. Here's a last-minute ad, we're right up against deadline.

I wanted Delta to take a look at this. And Delta concurred with me: This isn't an ad that we want to take. We want to be talking about the positive things that go with travel. It just didn't meet our standards.

The publisher made it clear that they do not know anything about luggage fees or other extra revenue created by new fees, and repeated that they really only want "feel good" travel content.

Geardiary.com took some time to talk with Scott Jordan of Scottevest and managed to clear up some of the misconceptions about the ads. The first was that people claimed that the whole thing was just one big stunt - and that Scott Jordan never intended to actually run the ads. Geardiary got access to some of the internal emails showing that the ad buy was real, and that it would have gone in the magazine had Delta not rejected it. 

But as Geardiary correctly points out, once the ad was rejected, Jordan would have been a fool to not run with the story and make it go viral - this is what he does, and this is a big part of how he sells his products. 

The lessons learned from this are simple:

• The publisher for the Delta Airlines magazine only wants "positive" articles - and telling people how to save money on baggage fees is apparently not very positive.
• When a story dies down, the Internet can bring anything back to life - especially if it makes the airlines look like the bad guys.
• You can get better (and cheaper) publicity from a mini-scandal than you can from a regular ad.
• Baggage fees are too important for airlines to let anyone mess with them.
• The magazine didn't necessarily block the ad to protect Delta, but they did admit that they didn't want it.

Sadly for the airlines, the story doesn't really end there, as Scottevest just announced a new jacket that will actually hold a days worth of travel items - completely eliminating the need for a carry-on... Enough has been said about the "incident" here on Gadling, so for the real nitty gritty, we'll send you over to Geardiary to read all the details.

Scott

Scott Jordan, CEO

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