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Kristin Lauria
Race the sales.
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Kristin Lauria
The Delta Partnership that is I think really the breakthrough in private aviation. Really understanding how can we connect private aviation to commercial aviation and what opportunities does that bring together?
Matt Britton
To thrive in a rapidly evolving landscape, brands must move at an ever increasing pace. I'm Matt Britton, Founder and CEO of susee. Join me and key industry leaders as we dive deep into the shifting consumer trends within their industry, why it matters now and how you can keep up. Welcome to the Speed of Culture. We're live here at CF in Las Vegas and today we're thrilled to be joined by Kristin Lauria, the Chief Customer Marketing Officer for Wheels Up. With a career spanning transformative leadership roles at IBM Cigna. Now Wheels Up, Kristen is redefining private aviation through innovation, accessibility and customer centric solutions. Kristen, so great to see you today.
Kristin Lauria
You as well I'm glad to be here.
Matt Britton
Absolutely. So Wheels up is such an interesting business because the world has changed so much in terms of travel that would have been unimaginable maybe two decades ago for consumers that are fortunate enough to be able to fly private. How are you able to communicate this offering to consumers, many of which probably don't fully understand what wheels of offering is?
Kristin Lauria
Yeah, so I agree with you. First off, I think 20 years ago I'm not sure it was a topic of conversation and now you see that maybe it's the experience economy. Right. But private aviation comes up over and over. I think the way we communicate it is simple in terms of really journeys, experiences, where are you going, how are you getting there? What's the most convenient way to get there? The mediums through which we communicate are the same mediums we communicate everywhere else, from social media, through the press and really in event based type organizations. So yeah, I think it's the same as every other industry and I think the experience generation is really just driving the need for it more and more.
Matt Britton
In terms of the audience that you're going after, how would you describe your target audience for Wheels Up?
Kristin Lauria
Yeah, high net worth individuals, both on the corporate and the leisure side. But I think the target that we're going after is a target that's slightly different. It's people who really want to understand the best way end to end on a journey. So these are customers that might fly commercial, sometimes might fly private, want to get to destinations that they may not have been able to get get to before and really care about the end to end experience.
Matt Britton
And of course time is.
Kristin Lauria
The time is of the essence and.
Matt Britton
That'S ultimately what you're offering people, right?
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Kristin Lauria
And on and on the corporate side that's always been the case. So the reason you fly private is because you can't get your meeting any other way. Right. And you need to save the time. But I think that's more and more the case on the individual side as well.
Matt Britton
Yeah, we talk a lot about at Susie, about the barbell economy, how there is a rising opportunity both on the value side of the population, especially in the US and on the luxury side. And there's been a boom in in luxury businesses that have performed so well even post pandemic. And do you see there being continued rise in demand with the high net worth individual and luxury set that's driving growth in the business?
Kristin Lauria
I do think the demand is going to continue to drive higher and higher with the high net worth individual. But the more we make it accessible, it expands that much.
Matt Britton
What does that mean, accessible?
Kristin Lauria
So people didn't understand the ability in the past to fly Delta over to London and then a quick flight, a private flight over to Ibiza. And if you balance that out across a group of people, it's not necessarily inaccessible.
Matt Britton
Right.
Kristin Lauria
And so oftentimes people just didn't even know that was possible. Taking a group of people from New York to Nantucket. One of my favorite things that we talked about this summer is leaf peeping, going to Lake Canandaigua, a quick hour trip from White Plains, New York with your friends, spend the day at the Finger Lakes and go back. And when you distribute that across a group of people, that's more accessible?
Matt Britton
Yeah, I think that's more. What I was getting at the onset is that for some people, they think of private aviation, flying private jets is kind of out of reach to them. And when you say accessible, it means that you don't have to be a billionaire to fly.
Kristin Lauria
You don't. In our offering span, you can fly on demand charter or you could do a membership. But this is not about putting several million dollars down and buying a timeshare on a particular aircraft. You can put a couple hundred thousand dollars down and you have the ability to use that across commercial and private aviation. And that's a pretty low point of entry. Right. But you also can fly on demand char with us and then earn rewards back. So that's much more accessible than in the past.
Matt Britton
So in building the wheels off brand, what have been some of the effective tactics that you've undertaken to make sure that obviously you're doing considerations that for consumers, it's not an impulse purchase, has to come at the right time for them. What's been effective for you at bringing new customers into the fold?
Kristin Lauria
This is a conversation that happens at places where our customers are. On the B2B side, it's very much going into companies and talking through the value proposition with procurement. But on the leisure side, it is really about accessing those customers where they are. Yeah. So for example, next week we're going to be at the Cayman Cookout and we'll be with them for a week and we'll be able to talk to them about some solutions. Some people are already flying there on Delta and we'll be able to intercept that process right there. So a lot of events and really going to where the customers are and experience it with experiencing those events with them.
Matt Britton
I know the super bowl is a big place.
Kristin Lauria
Super bowl was a big place. We'll be there. We're not going to do as much as we are in the past this year, but we are expanding. And then we're going to create some signature events too, to do things that places that they may have not gone to in the past, maybe around Davos, around Wimbledon. We're trying to think about the places where our customers would want to go.
Matt Britton
Yeah, we just had Mark Weinstein, the CMO of Hilton, and one of the things we were talking about is that leisure travel has very much been driven in recent years by kind of these passion points like the Taylor Swift tour or NFL games or tailgating and. Yeah, so. So people will use that event as sort of like the staple for a weekend trip. And I would have to imagine for your customers that's a great occasion to get out, use your services.
Kristin Lauria
It's a great occasion and they're willing to fly it. If we could create all of the experience end to end and get them there and get them back in that same day, that is a great way to start flying. They can do that on demand and then they do it a couple times and then they join us as members.
Matt Britton
So your role as CMO obviously probably has a lot of different parts to it. How are you focused on the business in terms of splitting up your day and your time to make sure you continue to drive the growth?
Kristin Lauria
Well, the day is 24 by 7. Yeah, we fly all day long. Most of my day is really talking to the market and to the customers and really thinking through the journey and the experience, whether it's through member services and or the experiences that we're going to create. So yeah, I think most of the day is around listening to the customers, listening to the stakeholders, and working across the organization to make sure everything comes together.
Matt Britton
And in terms of loyalty and making sure you keep customers, I'm sure a big part of it is also making sure that you're accurately communicating with them. Different opportunities to use your services and obviously different attributions of the wheels up product.
Kristin Lauria
Yeah, yeah.
Matt Britton
Over time. So you're here at ces. Why are you here and what do you hope to accomplish during your time here?
Kristin Lauria
Well, we always want to interact with customers. There's many corporate customers here, but we're also here in partnership with Delta.
Matt Britton
Okay, so tell me about the Delta Partnership.
Kristin Lauria
Yeah, so the Delta Partnership, that is I think, really the breakthrough in private aviation. Really understanding how can we connect private aviation to commercial aviation and what opportunities does that bring together. So about a year ago, Delta is our lead investor and we work daily to come up with really different opportunities, things that haven't been thought about before. We look at technology. How do we bring those two markets together? How do we bring the loyalty programs together? So just a really unique opportunity and so we're here to support them.
Matt Britton
So how does the partnership unfold? So I'm a Delta Diamond Flyer. How I be able to use that? I guess status on Delta to connect with the wheels off service?
Kristin Lauria
Yeah. So if you're a member and you put a fund down, there's ways that the status is something that you have with us. Your fund itself can be used across Delta. It could also be so you use the fund for a Delta flight and for our own flight. And so there's so many different ways. At the super bowl, for example, when we did a breakfast with Brady and we invited our Delta360 customers to join us at those events. So there's a lot of crossover between their membership base and private flight. And we think through all sorts of opportunities for the customers.
Matt Britton
We'll be right back with the speed of culture after a few words from our sponsors.
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Matt Britton
So moving forward, are there new destinations, new I guess airline or airplanes that you're putting into market or different things that are going to be driving?
Kristin Lauria
So over the last year we've been really focused on operational excellence and when our new CEO joined us a year ago, we talked about being the best friend aviation company in the industry, private aviation company. And yes, that's about our operational metrics and on time metrics, but we also just NBAA just here a few months ago we put out our new fleet modernization strategy and we've invested in Phenom 300s and Challenger 300s and across those two fleets we really feel we could serve most the missions and then we supplement that with our on demand charter business. It's called Air Partner and we have access to any other aircraft if those two fleets don't suffice the mission. So we've been doing a fleet modernization strategy and that really helps the efficiency and just puts us at the forefront of operational effectiveness.
Matt Britton
Very cool. Moving forward. I mean, I know in the past there's been discussion not with Wheels up, but in general about inner city travel and taking drone based helicopters from one building to the next so you didn't have to sit in traffic in major cities. Do you see a world where I.
Kristin Lauria
Know that Delta's thinking about a lot of that as well, but also just the helicopter transports between getting over to JFK from New York. So that is a big part of it. We're doing some of that work now and making that whole experience experience seamless. Especially if you do take Delta overseas and then you need to get over to an FBO to take a private flight, how do you get there? So all of that I think is part of our solution and that's what we've been working on, what we call global aviation solutions. Because the solution is not just the flight Itself, it's the connection points between and making sure the experience, from the commercial experience to the private experience and everything in between is really what's important. And so that's going to depend on different partnerships and different forms of travel.
Matt Britton
Absolutely. So what are some of the things that you're doing in 2025 to stay fresh, understand maybe some new tactics and trends so you can continue to drive growth for the business?
Kristin Lauria
Tactics and trends from a marketing perspective, really, we're leaning heavily into experience ourselves. So there's the whole customer experience. And how do we make sure that every touch point, whether it's our digital integration, whether it's member services, whether it's on the ground, in flight, how do we really create seamlessness? We've talked about omnichannel experiences, I think back in 2008, of course, ye but really bringing that to fruition is a lot harder and it hasn't quite been done. So doing that for us is really, that's top of mind for me. Every single day on top of it. The experience economy, we're creating our own experiences, whether it's experiences that are unique to the individual and to the customer, or whether it's participating in a curated experience that already exists. How do we make that happen and leverage our services in the middle of it and use that to market our services? That's something that we're thinking about day in and day out.
Matt Britton
Yeah, I mean, it makes sense to have that seamless experience because ultimately if your offerings that save consumer time, then you don't want them fumbling around when they're trying to book a flight or when they're trying to change a flight. You need to make that all time saving and seamless for them.
Kristin Lauria
Like with any consumer, whether it's high net worth or not high net worth, sometimes you're doing something digitally and sometimes you're doing something in person or on the phone and you want all of that to work. But the idea of the experience itself, like we don't want our customers to have to go somewhere where they're not to learn about our products and our services. So we want to create those experiences around what they're already doing and what they're interested in doing. And that's how we want to market. So it's not something that they have to step out of their daily activities to do. It's something that they're going to learn about and something that they wanted to do anyway.
Matt Britton
Makes sense. So, shifting gears as we wrap up here, I'd love to hear a little Bit about your career journey, how you ended up at Wheels up, kind of where you were prior and what excited you about this opportunity.
Kristin Lauria
Yeah. So for me, it's logical. Even though you look at my background and you'll say, how do you go from point A to point B? Every single opportunity I've taken is about pivoting a brand. And when I say pivoting, I don't take those opportunities where you're going up an S curve, if you will. I take those opportunities where you're transforming. And if I look back over my career, every time it's been something that somebody has told me, don't do that.
Matt Britton
Right.
Kristin Lauria
Whether it was from Lotus, as they were competing with Outlook and Google Mail back in the day.
Matt Britton
I remember Lotus.
Kristin Lauria
Yeah. I saw it as a way for us to shift an IBM from collaboration to social business. Gosh, I'm going to go all the way back to the 90s. Xerox was in competition with Canon, and I heard somebody speak about distributed applications in 1993, and that the value of the Xerox printer was that they had a printer on every floor, networked in every building around the world. Forget about the toner. And I said, oh, that's interesting. And so I jumped in there. And so go to Cigna. From health plans to health services, in the middle of the pandemic. Right. People said, what are you doing? Right. And here, Wheels up, we have some challenges, but it's a market under transformation. And what I saw in this business was a community that was in place and that was intact, and. And they wanted this business to survive. And so I do think that the industry is shifting. So again, it's a pivot. It's a strong brand, strong community. And how do we pivot from private aviation to global aviation solutions? That's just like every other opportunity I've done.
Matt Britton
Yeah. And I mean, what gives you the conviction to make that leap and dive into these new opportunities? Like, how do you know what's right?
Kristin Lauria
You know it's right when you see an opportunity and when the stakeholders are still in it.
Matt Britton
Right, right.
Kristin Lauria
I look at that very carefully, and I did spend some time with the customer base before I jumped on board. Yeah. There's a lot of naysayers, but you talk to the stakeholders, not just customers. And when there's passion about a brand and when there's depth in a brand and there's history, you have conviction and you bring it forward and, you know you can transform it.
Matt Britton
Yeah. And it's a super interesting space. And obviously One that I think is we continue to grow again given the demographic shifts, given people are continually pressed for time, trying to be in so many places at once, I can see why the demand continues.
Kristin Lauria
Absolutely.
Matt Britton
Awesome.
Kristin Lauria
Absolutely.
Matt Britton
So to wrap things up here, is there a quote or mantra that we always ask our guests at that guide you professionally?
Kristin Lauria
And you know, I'm not going to give you one that everybody would know because it's from my father. Father, good.
Matt Britton
Let's hear it.
Kristin Lauria
And my father, as he passed, he said, there's a lot of people that drive success based on what they take from the world. And I hope that you'll spend your life figuring out how you give back. And so every role I take, it really is about what you give back. And that might be in terms of your teams and it might be in terms of customers, but for me, it's success is about what you give back to life.
Matt Britton
I love that. And I think for me personally, one of the most rewarding parts of my career is seeing people who have worked for me that go off and do great things.
Kristin Lauria
Exactly.
Matt Britton
I think that's a great example of giving back and, and seeing the impact of your work in broader ways.
Kristin Lauria
So I think about that every day.
Matt Britton
It's awesome.
Kristin Lauria
How do you give back?
Matt Britton
Well, thanks so much for taking your time out of your busy schedule here at ces and congrats on the Delta partnership and where the business is going and all the success at Wheels Up.
Kristin Lauria
Thank you.
Matt Britton
Absolutely.
Kristin Lauria
Thanks for having me.
Matt Britton
Likewise. On behalf of Susan Agwee Team, thanks again to Kristen Lauria, Chief Marketing and Customer Officer of Wheels up, for joining us today. Be sure to subscribe rate review to Speed the Culture podcast on your favorite podcast platform. Till next time, see you everyone. Take care of foreign Speed of Culture is brought to you by Suzy as part of the Ad Week Podcast Network and a guest creator network. You can listen subscribe to all Adweek's podcasts by visiting Adweek.com podcasts to find out more about Susie, head to Suzy.com and make sure to search for the speed of culture in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or anywhere else podcasts are found. Click follow so you don't miss out on any future episodes. On behalf of the team here at suse, thanks for listening.
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Podcast Summary: "Taking Flight: How CMO Kristen Lauria is Transforming Private Aviation at Wheels Up"
The Speed of Culture Podcast hosted by Matt Britton, Founder and CEO of Suzy, delves into the evolving landscape of private aviation with Kristen Lauria, the Chief Customer Marketing Officer of Wheels Up. Released on July 17, 2025, this episode explores how Wheels Up is redefining private aviation through innovation, accessibility, and customer-centric solutions.
Matt Britton opens the discussion by highlighting the significant changes in travel behavior over the past two decades, emphasizing that private aviation was once a niche topic but has now become integral to the experience economy.
Kristen Lauria ([02:02] - [03:16]):
"First off, I think 20 years ago I'm not sure it was a topic of conversation and now you see that maybe it's the experience economy. Right. But private aviation comes up over and over."
She explains that Wheels Up communicates its offerings by focusing on the simplicity of journeys and experiences, utilizing familiar mediums like social media, press, and events to reach their audience.
The conversation shifts to identifying Wheels Up's target demographic. Kristen describes their focus on high net worth individuals who value the end-to-end travel experience, whether for corporate or leisure purposes.
Kristen Lauria ([03:53] - [05:11]):
"The target that we're going after is a target that's slightly different. It's people who really want to understand the best way end to end on a journey."
Matt introduces the concept of the barbell economy, noting the rise in luxury businesses and questioning the sustainability of this growth. Kristen responds by affirming the continued demand among high net worth individuals and highlights their efforts to make private aviation more accessible.
Kristen Lauria ([05:02] - [05:24]):
"I do think the demand is going to continue to drive higher and higher with the high net worth individual. But the more we make it accessible, it expands that much."
She elaborates on accessibility by explaining flexible membership models and on-demand charter services that lower the entry barrier for private aviation.
Matt inquires about the effective marketing tactics Wheels Up employs to attract and retain customers. Kristen emphasizes the importance of meeting customers where they are, both in B2B and B2C contexts.
Kristen Lauria ([06:36] - [07:09]):
"This is a conversation that happens at places where our customers are. On the B2B side, it's very much going into companies and talking through the value proposition with procurement."
She highlights participation in high-profile events like the Cayman Cookout and the Super Bowl to engage with potential customers directly, fostering relationships through experiential marketing.
A significant portion of the discussion focuses on the strategic partnership between Wheels Up and Delta Air Lines. Kristen describes this collaboration as a breakthrough in merging private and commercial aviation sectors.
Kristen Lauria ([09:00] - [09:36]):
"The Delta Partnership is I think, really the breakthrough in private aviation. Really understanding how can we connect private aviation to commercial aviation and what opportunities does that bring together."
She outlines how the partnership allows members to leverage their Delta status within Wheels Up services, creating a seamless travel experience across both platforms.
Kristen discusses Wheels Up’s commitment to operational excellence and fleet modernization, which includes investing in Phenom 300s and Challenger 300s to enhance service efficiency and meet diverse mission requirements.
Kristen Lauria ([12:59] - [13:42]):
"We've invested in Phenom 300s and Challenger 300s and across those two fleets we really feel we could serve most of the missions and then we supplement that with our on-demand charter business."
This strategy ensures that Wheels Up remains at the forefront of operational effectiveness, catering to a wide range of customer needs.
Looking ahead to 2025, Kristen outlines various initiatives aimed at staying ahead of market trends. She emphasizes the importance of creating seamless, omnichannel customer experiences and leveraging curated events to market their services effectively.
Kristen Lauria ([14:48] - [15:56]):
"We're leaning heavily into experience ourselves. So there's the whole customer experience. And how do we make sure that every touch point... is real seamlessness."
Additionally, she touches upon potential advancements like drone-based helicopters for urban travel, aligning with innovations pursued by Delta to enhance connectivity and efficiency.
As the interview concludes, Kristen shares insights into her career trajectory, highlighting her passion for transforming brands and her commitment to giving back.
Kristen Lauria ([16:34] - [18:25]):
"Every role I take, it really is about what you give back. And that might be in terms of your teams and it might be in terms of customers, but for me, it's success is about what you give back to life."
She reflects on her experiences at companies like Lotus, IBM, and Cigna, emphasizing her strength in pivoting and transforming brands amidst challenges.
Matt and Kristen wrap up the conversation by discussing the enduring growth potential in private aviation, driven by demographic shifts and the increasing demand for time-efficient travel solutions. Kristen reiterates the importance of community and seamless experiences in driving the brand forward.
Conclusion
This episode of The Speed of Culture Podcast provides a comprehensive look into how Wheels Up, under the leadership of CMO Kristen Lauria, is innovating within the private aviation sector. From enhancing accessibility and modernizing the fleet to forging strategic partnerships and embracing future trends, Wheels Up exemplifies how brands can thrive by moving at the speed of culture.
Note: Timestamps correspond to the moments in the transcript where the quoted statements occur.