Tim Mapes

101 Great Minds on Music Brands and Behavior

Tim Mapes, SVP and Chief Communications Officer, Delta

Tim Mapes, Senior Vice President, and Chief Communications Officer at Delta Air Lines, is a memorable architect of the airline’s brand legacy and resounding reputation. He demonstrates a futuristic spirit fuelled by a voracious appetite for aviation.

With a strategic acumen that knows no bounds and a creative style that defies convention, Tim Mapes has pioneered groundbreaking marketing campaigns that forge profound connections with global travelers. His ability to articulate Delta's unique value proposition has solidified the airline's reign as an industry titan on the global stage.

Under Tim’s transformative guidance, Delta ascends to unprecedented altitudes, seamlessly blending unrivaled customer service with a reinvented travel experience that often leaves anunforgettable mark on customers worldwide.

. . .

“A sustained series of actions make it very clear we are who our customers and employees think we are.”

— TIM MAPES, SVP AND CHIEF COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER, DELTA

Uli Reese: What is the first brand you remember?

Tim Mapes: One that jumps out is Nike. I graduated from high school in 1982 and vividly recall Nike being a status symbol. I came from humble beginnings and couldn’t afford things like that. I was, maybe regrettably, hyper-aware of it being not just a performance athletic shoe but an aspirational fashion statement that the cool kids and best athletes wore. I was neither cool nor one of the best athletes, but I remember ‘the swoosh.’ Back then, there wasn't a lot of Nike advertising, but that was a brand I not only related to but aspired to wear long before I could be a customer.

Reese: You've been with Delta for 31 years now – with a career focused largely on marketing and communications. Why did you choose this industry?

Tim: Back in the 1970s (?), there was a TV show in the United States called “Bewitched,” and one of the main characters, Darrin Stevens, was an advertising executive. I was younger than 10 when I watched that show, but I clearly remember that Darrin, who wore a suit, would go to work with his boss, drink martinis, and play around with storyboards. Then, at the end of the day, he went home to his beautiful wife, Samantha, who was played by Elizabeth Montgomery. I remember thinking what a cool mix of business, commerce, art, and creativity that was. I went to the University of Georgia and didn't know you could study a degree track that led to this thing called advertising until my sophomore year when I met somebody who was an ad major. The University of Georgia had an amazing advertising program, but it was doing the project work, which invariably required all-nighters when I realized how energized I was when I should have been exhausted. That's when I fell in love with advertising and knew I had to try to do this professionally.

Reese: We're at a unique point in history; we're still coming back from COVID, and the industry landscape is changing. Have you any insight on how we do that?

Tim: The answer to your question is authenticity. You can destroy trust so quickly. Some of the things that have most strengthened the level of trust people place in our brand have nothing to do with communications but everything to do with actions and decisions we've made.

It’s a sustained series of those actions that, over time, make it very clear that we are who our customers and employees think we are.

Reese:  Can you share a little more about your process and how you've created such positive affinity for the Delta brand?

Tim: It’s truly being committed to the long game in lifetime customer value. If somebody comes up to us and says, “I know this was a non-refundable ticket, but I had a car tire blow out on my way to the airport,” we empower our people to make a judgment in that instance that is erring on the side of the customer, versus erring on the side of the benefit to Delta. We actually call it the blown tire rule, but it applies to other circumstances and interactions as well. The key is to err on the side of protecting that long-term customer relationship.

Reese: So, trust is at the core, but what else sets you apart at Delta?

Tim:  I've had five different CEOs while I've been here, and I've learned something from every single one of them. The commonality is listening. I started my career at Bozell Jacobs and left there to go to BBDO, where a creative director said, ‘Give me the freedom of a tight brief,’ which sounded so weird at the time. But his point was to give him tight precision on what this needs to do, and he’d bring you a million ways to do that. There’s an element of ego that starts creeping in when you have “chief” in your title, but there are 90,000 people in Delta who every day get to decide how much of their ‘Deltaness’ they're going to bring forward. We try to invert the pyramid. It's not the CEO up at the top and 90,000 frontline employees down here. It's the opposite. It's the leadership at the bottom trying to make sure that the resources, tools, inspiration, and information make it to where the frontline employees work to meet the needs of 200 million customers around the world every single day. To me, it always comes back to listening.

Reese: Sonic consumer touchpoints are now driven mainly by tech, and what's interesting is that brands like Mercedes-Benz basically said we want to own our sonic identity. What are your thoughts?

Tim: The challenge is the variations in tone and manner and what you want to convey in different settings, and the reality is that clients don't maintain that discipline. It's the right idea not fully acted upon by the various groups of people who must embrace that idea. We don't do it because it's really hard. We've looked at audible branding as a jet taking off or as sounds in aviation - they're highly distinctive, and yet there's nobody doing much with that in our category. We use Viola Davis as our voiceover. Her voice is unbelievable. Before that, we used Donald Sutherland, who was also unbelievable. You hear their voice, and you know who the brand is by virtue of the voices.

Reese: Before we close, is there something near to your heart that you want everybody to know...

Tim: I believe in the consistency and authenticity of the actions that we undertake to prove to our service employees that we've got their backs. We're committed to their success. That includes accountability. We’ve hired 25,000 Delta employees in the last 24 months, and when you hire that many people over such a short period of time, you're going to see it all. You're trying to counsel and coach and cajole, but at the end of the day, if people aren't committed to serving others the way the vast majority of the rest of this place is, this isn't right for them. This is not the place where they're going to find happiness, and they're going to stand out because there are so many others going above and beyond to serve better. I find that incredibly exciting, hopeful, and optimistic.

Note: The interview took place in Atlanta, Georgia on the 3rd April 2023.

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