A consumer recreational marketing concept led by chief promoter and CEO Kurt Hawkins, a slimy, smarmy, egotistical, narcissist who along with his VP Sales will tell you anything to sell you an order slot. Take away the negative personality stuff of these guys and the marketing was totally original in that sales were taken out of the long time confines of traditional flying/aviation publications and instead promoted with stories and profiles in non-aviation media. That was a very unique, purposefull approach and concept to attract non-flying high energy sports enthusiasts. Cessna or Piper never had free, high profile publicity promotional articles in The Robb Report.Originally Posted by Mike B
This video is excellent. The host provides a succinct synopsis of SLSA, the Icon company, it's history and mounting problems and the accidents this year. It should be a mandatory syllabus to be seen by the reporting media before they write more Halliday accident stories.
I wish he had talked more about the 2016 controversial new mandatory sales contract Hawkins wanted all buyers to agree to and sign. The host touches on a number of contract changes but neglects to say that the overarching reason for all of it was to completely shift the burden of liability from Icon to the purchaser. It was beyond cynical. They designed a marketing campaign and an airplane to appeal to non-flying jet-ski type yahoos and then realized years later that all these adrenalin junkies might kill themselves in droves, so they better transfer all liability to the newly minted pilots so they avoid being sued out of existence. It's why they placed the flight recorders in the plane-- to provide proof of negligence, wrong doing and error on the part of the pilot. Beyond cynical.
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