‘Tis the Season – To Move Forward

What’s the point in dwelling on the past. Let bygones be bygones is what I say. Microbes had their way with us in 2020, but they didn’t know who they were dealing with when they set their sights on humans, so we’ll get them back in 2021. They’ll wish they had chosen to stay with bats or civets or Wuhan labs or wherever they came from sooner than later.

At any rate, what to look forward to? Normalcy for one. The Roaring ’20s perhaps? A century ago it was partly triggered by the passing of a pandemic, so there’s hope. But, for Fly By Night, we’re going to get to a new normal too.

I’ve been trying to think of a way to mesh our Copilot’s marketing messaging with aviation and having a continual theme. Combining careers and passions is harder than it seems (and costly for that matter). I’m still convinced it can be done though. Since I started taking flying seriously again, I started reading through National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) aircraft accident reports. It occurred to me as I read through them that most of my education hasn’t been from people telling me how to do something, rather it’s been from me completely screwing up and learning to do it differently next time.

Of course in marketing you can do that and remain confident that you will live to learn the lesson. In aviation, not so much. I remember a time, I was 18 years old, on a cross-country working on my private pilot’s license. I was taking off out of Paris, Texas to head back to Addison Airport and the second I was airborne I just drifted toward the wind sock. I had no control. The rudder didn’t do anything, I didn’t want to use too much aileron as I was so close to the ground (the fact that I even considered that with my experience at the time is remarkable when I think back) and I just continued toward it. The only reason I didn’t hit the windsock is that the plane missed it. Even today, with my flight instructor rating and thousands of take offs later in the same kind of plane I can’t definitely say what happened.

I can tell you what’s going to happen in Fly By Night though. An accident report will be analyzed. AKA a plane crashed on takeoff because he didn’t check his fuel and it turned out that he had just enough to get him airborne (you’d be surprised how often that happens). That’s pretty interesting whether or not you’re a pilot, in my opinion anyways. Then we’ll correlate that to a marketing issue — The ad campaign took off seamlessly, but… the client pulled the plug on budget before the first conversion!

So that will be happening. Stay tuned and be excited. By the way. You might wonder why there’s a puppy as the image. That’s Dottie, the ultimate moving forward icon. As our family Christmas present watch her grow alongside Copilot. As a Great Pyrenees/Anatolian Shepherd mix she has a long way to go, just like us. Hope to have you join us on the flight.

Author: Douglas Eldridge

Douglas Eldridge began his career in content in 2003 as an editor at a global newswire. Over the years he has worked in almost every facet of digital marketing, from PPC to ecommerce. When he's not marketing you can find him with his wife, two kids, their dog and a flock of chickens in Denver, Colorado or in the right seat of a Cessna 172 teaching people to fly airplanes. View all posts by Douglas Eldridge