Adam Morgan, Director of Global Communications & Marketing at Bristow Group

Welcome to the podcast Above the Cloud: Stories from the Boardroom. In every episode, we interview business leaders who are navigating the complex world of B2B marketing. Whether you're trying to grow revenue, swoop into a new market, or launch new products, we promise you've landed in the right spot. And now, your host, Richard Bird. I'm your host, Richard Bird, and today we're bringing on Adam Morgan, uh, the director of global communications and marketing at the Bristo Group. Adam, thanks for joining us today.

Thanks for having me. Yeah, we're glad to have you on. So, this is our first season and so you're one of the very first uh guests that we've had on the show and so we're really uh happy to have you on board. It can only go up from here, I guess. Great. So, the the big question that we ask people that you're probably not prepared for is if your company was a bird, what kind of bird would you be? Wow. Okay. No, that's a good question. On the fly, let's see. So, so our company, we we operate helicopters, so we are already kind of inherently just birdlike, right?

But I would say um you know, I had a job in Alaska at Juno, Alaska, and there were tons of bald eagles, eagles in there, and on my drive home one time, we had to drive by the landfill, and there was always just, I don't know, 30 to 50 bald eagles sitting over by the landfill picking things out to eat and everything. And one day I was driving by and I saw this bald eagle literally pick up an old and this is probably gonna be a little gross. So, uh, little content warning for our listeners, but pick up a deer carcass and carry it off.

Right. Wow. And I'm not saying that Bristol picks up deer deer carcasses, but we pick up passengers from one location and take them to another location. So, I'm going to say that our spirit animal is the bald eagle. Wow. Well, that's spoken like a true American. You know, the the bald eagles. That is crazy, though. I can imagine seeing a eagle pick up a deer carcass. That is like that's a that's a that's a chunk. Especially in Alaska, they have they're not like in Texas where we have these little white tail deer.

They got some big deer up there. Oh, it's a testament to their strength. Another uh another thing that Bristo has. All right. Very cool. Adam, you just had a long career and you've done a lot of stuff in your career and you I know when you were a little kid sitting in elementary school, you weren't sitting there going, you know, I want to work as a marketing guy for a helicopter company. How'd you how'd you get on this path? Uh, and tell us a little bit about your background and how you got here. Great question.

Uh, let's see. Where do I start? I guess um I was born a baby. Then when I was three, no, I won't take you through all of it. Um, no, actually, um, you know, it's interesting. I was just having this conversation with somebody the other day and, um, we were talking about how'd you get in your career, blah, blah, blah. And I said, you know, it's interesting. I was in the military. I got out of the military. And actually, at that point, I still had no intention of going to college and working in an office setting.

My my big master plan in life was to get some bluecollar type job, you know, use my VA loan, buy a house, uh, work some construction site job. Um, you know, Monday through Friday, 9 to5, whatever, come home, sit in my my easy boy recliner, watch Sports Center, and do it all again the next day. Um, and that's actually what I started to do when I first got out of the military. Um, and and then I realized, well, gosh, I I just don't want to do this for the next 40 years. Um, and so then I went and and signed up at at college and used my VA, my GI bill to pay for college.

In college, I actually started as a business major with a uh focus on HR. Um, and so as part of the business major program at Portland State University, which is where I got my undergrad, you have to take public speaking. All business majors have to take a public speaking class. And I took the public speaking class and uniquely to me, unlike most people, I absolutely loved it. I loved public speaking. I love being up in front of everybody, all eyes on me, give me all the attention, let me talk to people for an hour or whatever.

Um, and that's when I realized that there was this whole degree program for communications and marketing at the university and I quickly switched uh majors, got into communications, and you know, the rest is kind of history. But, you know, right out of college, I worked at the USDA Forest Service. I worked in Alaska and Kentucky doing public affairs. U for a short bit, I thought I was going to do legislative affairs. I love tracking policy, uh, responding to congressional inquiries, going to Washington DC on bill visits and briefing our congressionals on how we were spending the the funding that they were giving us, etc.

Um, and thought that was going to be a great career for me. Moved up to Alaska, it's where my daughter was born. And at that point, Alaska just seemed so far away from everybody. Uh, so I was looking to to get back down into the lower 48. And that's when I got a job at Boeing. I spent about 10 years at the Boeing company. Was a phenomenal career. did worked on their commercial airplane side, worked on their space side, worked in their international sales communications. So I covered Latin America, Africa, and the Caribbean.

A lot of great travel opportunities in that job. Back to Houston for their space business. I spent about 10 years there. Then decided, hey, you know, I think it's time for a change. I'm living in Houston. Oil and gas, as we all know, here in the Houston area, is a big industry for for um for Houston. um decided that I was going to focus on that industry and and got a job at GE oil and gas um doing commercial communications for their sales team. So, a lot of that's where I learned a little bit about marketing or a lot of bit a lot a little bit about marketing.

Um and then from there I got a job at McDermott as their global head of communications and marketing. Um reporting right to the CEO, supporting the management team, had a marketing team, had a communications team. Um great job there. Um, McDermott went on to buy CBNI, helped them announce the merger, helped them start the integration, and then a recruiter reached out to me for the job I'm in now at Bristo um, as the director of global communications and marketing. And interestingly enough, um, when the recruiter first reached out to me, I I turned the job down or turned the opportunity to interview for the job down um because I was like, you know, McDermott's a much smaller company than any company I've ever worked for.

Wasn't sure how I felt about that. a much smaller team than I have had in the past. Wasn't sure how I felt about that. But then I just started looking at Mcdermad online or I mean at Bristo online and and and studying the company and and what they do and it was just a really interesting company and I just couldn't get it out of my mind. So I reached back out to the recruiter after probably a few weeks actually and said, "Hey, I don't know if you're still looking for somebody for that job, but I' I'd really like to be considered for this still." And she said, "As a matter of fact, we are still looking." Um, and it was just a really nice kind of combination of both my aviation experience and my oil and gas experience coming together under one roof, which uh which was really appealing and exciting to me and that's kind of how I got to where I am today.

That's awesome. Well, that's that's interesting. Right. Circling back getting right back into the aerospace business. Uh, and like you said, it's a good mixture between the you know, since Bristol serves a lot of oil and gas clients and it's a big part of your business. Betty felt at home right away in that role. Oh, absolutely. Lots of ex-military folks here. Obviously, there's just a passion in aviation. Whenever you work in an aviation industry, you know, it's it's one of those industries where you just, you know, even if you don't work in it, people pay attention to it.

They they're just fascinated with aviation. I think aviation space and cars are probably the things that people, you know, we have a lot of uh enthusiasts, if you will, that just kind of follow us and track us and they, you know, they might be accountants in completely different industries, but they're like, "Hey, I like aviation, so I know all the helicopter types and I know all the missions and Oh, yeah. Well, that uh when we were kids, they'd have book fairs and like every book fair, I would always get like some kind of aviation book.

It's like the airplanes of World War I. Yep. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, that is really cool. And helicopters are about as cool as you can get. Well, I don't know. Space stuff is probably even a little cooler, but helicopters are pretty awesome. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's great. Well, and I liked your story about the uh you know, you the public speaking class is kind of what drew you to marketing. And I think yeah, I like talking a lot and uh and being in front of people. It's a sure sign of a marketer. I always say I never met a mic.

I didn't like. So, right. Exactly. Very good. Well, that journey that you that you took, um Boeing's a really interesting company and you know, uh they're kind of going through a rough patch right now, but when you were there, that was just a real darling brand. That must have been really exciting uh place to work when you were working there. What was your what was your favorite role when you were at Boeing? Yeah. No, it was I mean every role I had I had four different roles in a 10ear span and they were all just phenomenal.

I learned so much from each role and I'll say this, you know, Boeing is in my view still a darling brand. They'll get through all of these challenges that they're in and they'll come out the other side a better, stronger company like most companies that go through challenges do. Um, you know, and and they had some of the best communicators in the world. Um, and and they still do have a phenomenal communications team over there. I stay in touch with a lot of folks over there. You know, my first job at Boeing interest in the was on the 787 Dreamliner, which uh was a fascinating program to work at and interesting time to work um in communications at a company like Boeing that's doing some really big and amazing things because that aircraft, you know, so every 15 years or so is when Boeing or Airbus or whomever builds a new aircraft.

So it doesn't happen all the time, not every day. And so the 787 Dreamlininer was the first aircraft designed and built kind of in this new 24-hour news cycle. You know, it's almost like getting built in a bubble. My first week on the job, so coming from up in Juno, Alaska in the Forest Service, you know, we're talking about forest forestry management, proactive management and stuff like that. And then I come down to Boeing. My first week on the job, I got a my phone rang. I picked it up out of Morgan Boeing 77 Dreamliner Boeing.

And um and it was Matt Lowour's producer, right? Oh wow. You know, and so you know, up in Alaska, I was dealing with a local, you know, the Juno Juno Empire was a local paper, you know, the Anchorage Times or whatever. And here I was, you know, first week on the job picking up the phone. It was Matt Lauer's producer. And uh they were like, "Hey, you know, this Matt Law's producer, he really were really interested 787 and we want to come and do uh some standups and and and we want to pick uh the 787 Dreamliner as one of the where in the world is Matt Lowauour locations." Oh, wow.

Yeah. Well, we didn't do it that time because it was just a little too early in the development process. There was no airplane yet. We were still just designing it. But we did work with Matt Lowour and did Where in the world is Matt Lowauour? Um, a few years later when they actually had the airplane built and stuff and that was an interesting experience. I actually my role in that part of the of the program was I was assigned to Lester Hol. So I had did a lot of work with Lester Hol over about a 4-day span.

I was driving him all over Seattle. I'd go home and tell my wife, "Yeah, Lester Holt was driving around in my car all day." You know, I spent uh spent seven hours with Lester Hull today, taking him here and there and everything. Uh just an amazing person, great uh great journalist. Really enjoyed that time. But I think my favorite job, well, they were all just super phenomenal. I I loved my job when I covered Africa and Latin America. I went to Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, Morocco, uh been to Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Panama, um and all and you, you know, you meet some amazing people and you get to do a lot of really, really cool things and you learn a lot along the way.

So, my international job, I learned a lot about marketing for uh market entry. So, how do you condition a market before you even go in and sell a product? How do you create a customer preference for your market or for your product rather um before you even go there and introduce your product? Um so a lot of cool things a lot of a lot of things that I learned in in that whole 10 year. Oh man. Well, you know I can echo that. You know I was in a job uh once that I had to travel a lot internationally and you know one of the things that I got to do was I was one on on one of the first airplane rides for the 787.

Oh nice. Yeah. I didn't even know I was going to fly it. did that's not what it said on my ticket. And then all of a sudden I was on the 78 the Dreamliner and uh and I still remember I still have this too by the way. They gave me a deck of cards uh as part of it and it's it's the Boeing Dreamlininers on the cards and there's like a sticker and something else that they gave everybody on that flight and uh and I was like oh I've read about this and I heard this was coming. I didn't know I was going to get to fly on one but it was it was pretty cool.

Yeah. Well, from a marketing perspective now, we what should have happened is when you got off that flight, you would say, "Man, I just feel better after that flight." You may not know why, but the marketing team had all of the great kind of reasons why, you know, because of the composite material, they were able to, you know, increase the humidity because it doesn't corrode. So, you know, that dry skin that you get when you fly, it doesn't happen on the 787. Uh, they can pressurize the cabin differently.

So like you know the the the pressure and the headaches and the ear pops and everything um aren't as frequent. The fatigue that you might get from flying at high altitude like that. They pressurize it to believe it was like 6,000 ft which is basically like walking around Denver or something. Wow. That is crazy. That that was great. Uh I don't recall if I felt better. I didn't remember. I had the plane. Oh, you did. You did. You don't remember? You did. That's awesome. Well, very good. So I guess you know now in your role at Bristol.

Tell me about Bristo. How big of a company is it? You know I I know a little bit about you guys because I used to I used to do a little work for Bris Bristo in a formal life. Um uh tell me about the company. Yeah, Bristol we're a global company. We're headquartered right here in Houston, Texas. Um you know we have anywhere from 3 to 4,000 employees uh that support the company across the globe. We're in u you know pretty much any location where they have a a large oil and gas or energy offshore energy presence.

So um you know basically the main thing that we do and how we kind of got started was you know we fly oil and gas workers offshore to the energy platforms. Um you know it's think of it as just kind of like your you know your your aviation service for the for the energy industry. Um that makes up probably about 60 to 75% of our revenue. Um and then kind of where we've been growing over the last few years is what we call government services. Um what that is is uh mostly what we're doing is search and rescue.

So um we do search and rescue for private industry as well, but uh where it's growing the most is with government with governments across the globe. So we are the Coast Guard for the United Kingdom. Um so all of our aircraft over there is is branded like UK Coast Guard. Um his Majesty's Coast Guard, if you will. Uh we just won the contract to do the aviation for the coast guard for Ireland. Uh we do the aviation coast guard in the Netherlands down in the Dutch Caribbean down in Carousel. So that's another big piece of what we do.

And then I think if you look ahead kind of the exciting futuristic stuff that we're looking at doing is something called advanced air mobility. So think of you know the helicopter in itself the technology behind it really hasn't drastically changed over the over the over the years. Um advanced air mobility is looking at a new way to power aircraft. So, a lot of battery powered aircraft. Um, so that's going to open up a lot of new potential new markets. Um, new new ways of of thinking about flying. So, um, those are kind of our three main areas.

Wow. So, that is interesting because, you know, mostly we focus on B2B marketing on this podcast, but that B2G marketing is its own thing, right? I mean, that is uh that's its own discipline. And I would imagine there's some tricks to it. Did you have a, you know, was it difficult to kind of switch your mindset from being a a B2B marketer to business to government? What kind of obstacles did that pose to you? Yeah, I don't think you would. I mean, because, you know, at the end of the day, it's all people, right?

So whether it's a B TOC, B2B, B to B to G, at the end of the day, we're working with people, we're talking to people, we're we're trying to influence people, if you will. You know, I would say from the government perspective, the the the thing that you have to think about from that perspective is, you know, these are long-term contracts, right? They're not like two-year contracts. I think in most of the the government contracts we do are are 10 years or more uh with, you know, fiveyear options and things like that.

So, so once you land one, you know, it's kind of a coveted piece of of business to to get one of these government contracts because, you know, you have that contract secured for the next 10 years. Um, it's stable revenue, so our investors like it. Um, that kind of a thing. So, um, you know, but as far as like how you market the business and what we do, you know, obviously our experience in search and rescue, um, you know, we've been doing search and rescue for quite some time. It's just now that some of these smaller uh or some of these countries that don't want to carry a lot of overhead expense to to have their own own aviation arm, there's a lot of benefits to bringing in a company like Bristo to to support that those uh those missions.

Sure. And I guess from a revenue stream, it's really smart too to to you know, you're in a very volatile industry, the oil and gas. So, it's nice to have a a you know, be able to fall back on some long-term contracts that uh kind of maybe stabilize the business a little bit. Exactly. Are you guys um private equity backed or you um uh Well, we're a publicly traded company. Okay. Y All right. Very good. We trade under the symbol VTOL. Vertical takeoff and landing. All right. Well, that's good. That's cool. So, I guess you know, one thing that I always like to ask people uh about their role uh is, you know, what is one thing that you know now that you wish you would have known on day one?

At Bristo specifically? Yeah, specifically. Yeah. Um, that's an interesting question and I know we talked a bit before this and that was the one question I was like gosh I'm trying to think of you know I think it's at at you as you get along in your career you know there's not a lot I think in my opinion you know there's not a lot of surprises left I think um you know things happen and you're like okay while at the moment you're like wow I didn't expect that to happen but the fact that it happened you know you're you're ready for it because you've experienced it or or similar to it in your career you know I think one of the things what I would say is one of the things I love about Bristol is the people.

You know, I didn't expect to build such close relationships with so many people at the company. You know, we're we're 4,000 employees, but you know, I feel like there's not a lot of employees that I haven't heard their name or met, whether it be in person or over Teams or or with an email or whatever. Um I wasn't expecting to for it to feel like such a close-knit kind of family. Um, had I known that going into it, I I might have Yeah. Not that I did anything wrong when I first got here, but, you know, I think you just would have thought about it differently, treated people differently.

I'm not a mean guy or anything like that, so it wasn't like I treated people any certain way, but I think just knowing that it's such a close-knit family, you know, going into it, you just kind of you think about things a little bit differently and how things impact other people, etc. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, the 30,000 person company is is actually a small company compared to to Boeing, right? Yes. And I think, you know, from a marketing perspective, just, you know, obviously the the more you can learn about a company before you get there is is key, but you know, there's certain things that you just can't find out on the learn on the internet or or whatever.

So, just knowing how broad our services are, how the how the system works, you know, what we do, how we how we engage with our customers, etc., all of that going in on day one would have obviously made day one and day 30 and 45 a lot easier. Sure. Yeah. you know, part of our offering here at Bluebird is that we um we're fractional CMOs. So, every we start new jobs all the time and you go and you learn these companies. It's it's kind of like what you said where you there's a lot of things that are the same, but there but every company is has its own nuances and um even from even with just within a discipline of marketing too, right?

And so, you get in there and you're like, "Oh, wow. this and and we we've worked with companies that are you would think that they're about the same size company in the same industry and all these things that are going to be pretty similar but uh but they are all nuanced uh and the cultures are are can be very different. Absolutely. And you know, I think you bring up a good point because, you know, one of the things I learned quickly at Bristo is, you know, the helicopter industry for supporting the energy uh the helicopter piece of the energy industry is is pretty um you know, we've been around for a while, but it's also like we're we're still growing up in a way, right?

We're still maturing. Um you know, because if you think about how this all started, it was a very kind of mom and pop shop type of a type of an industry and it's very very early days. Um, from a marketing perspective, there's still a lot of that relationship-based face-toface type marketing, right? You know, so, you know, I don't expect that our customers are really finding us, you know, on Instagram or or or Facebook or or whatever. I mean, I think they follow us on like LinkedIn and and they enjoy the content that we put out, but I don't know that we're necessarily winning new business.

Maybe we're satisfying existing business and and highlighting our our our capabilities, etc. But, you know, I don't think that that's a marketing tactic for per se to to get new clients, for instance. Yeah. Well, it's a good thing since Tik Tok might be going away. So, yeah, we never we we ended up I have a a friend here at the office that is constantly joking about, hey, when are we getting our Tik Tok page? I said, I don't know. I don't think the Tik Tok's where it's at for us. But, yeah, I don't think your audience is hanging out there.

I don't think there's many uh uh you know, Scottish uh Coast Guard uh people that are going, "Yeah, let's let's hire our next search and rescue company based off of Tik Tok." But you know, we we would I'm sure we could come up with some pretty good Tik Tok content, but again, it's just at that point, it's just content for the sake of content, right? Yeah. You know, I think um one of the things that we've found in our discussions with with our guests is that, you know, going back to that every company is a little different and there's nuance to different industries and and and all that.

What would you say from a marketing perspective that is what what are the biggest obstacles your industry faces? Yeah, I would say for us um I think that one of our biggest challenges is to avoid being commoditized, right? Um you know, you have to avoid this whole, you know, it's all about price, you know, it's all about price, it's all about price, it's all about price. You know, when I first started here talking with the sales guy, like, hey, what's what do the customers care about? What do the what makes them tick?

Right? And it was, well, safety, a number one, got to be safe. It's price of admissions, right? right? If you're not a safe company, you're not going to do well in this industry. But then after that, it's cost, you know, um but we have to avoid going into this lowcost, you know, kind of race to the bottom, if you will. You know, win at any means, you know, there's a value that gets placed there. There should be a value placed on on what we do and how we do it. And so, you know, those are a lot of the conversations I have now with our BD folks and our our country heads and and and that is is what is the value that we bring to our customers?

you know, it's not about it can't be just about cost. It has to be it has to be a way for us to showcase our value that we bring our our assured service, um our safety record. You know, it's it's great if you're a low cost, but if you're not getting somebody from point A to point B regularly on time, you know, what's the cost of of those delays? Um you know, and is it worth the low cost at the onset just to have to go back and spend more later for um to to remedy it? So, you know, for me it's it's avoiding being commoditized and changing the conversation to value.

Yeah. Well, and you know, we see that a lot with our clients as well that especially, you know, in and you serve the oil and gas industry a lot and um they are they have very strong procurement teams and they're very good at uh at commoditizing. Uh but you know, I think the procurement guys are not the ones that have to get on the helicopter and go offshore. And I yeah, speaking to somebody who worked for an oil field services company for a while, I knew I knew a guy there and he was involved in two helicopter crashes and neither one with Bristol.

Uh I'll just I'll just say but what he he said he was on one uh flight and he was coming they were coming back from offshore and they were flying low and he saw that there were them big trees ahead and he thought I feel like we're flying a little low. Um he's like I'm sure this guy's got it covered. This is in West Africa. And uh and so he just flying. He's like, "No, I really feel like we're low." And they actually crashed into the tree canopy and they got stuck in one of the trees. Oh my gosh. I haven't heard that one.

I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is terrible." Uh but yeah, he survived. He was in the only person I've known who's been in a helicopter crash. He was in two helicopter crashes and he survived both of them. So yeah. Well, you know, and and you brought up, you know, the procurement side of of the business as well. you know what we do the the the logistics the people logistics of the it's it's an extremely important piece of the value chain right you have to get your people offshore but at the same token it's it's a fairly small piece for the large oil and gas companies right I mean you know they're they're spending billions on this that and the other thing you know we're a we're a small kind of a a contract for them to sign so I think it's easy for a procurement person to be like oh we're just signing this small contract with you know some logistics company right You know, I think it, you know, we have to make sure that we're more than that to them.

That we are a trusted partner. You know, we are a, you know, I think we're a solutions provider more than a service provider, you know, so you know, come to us with your your transportation needs and and and we'll come up with the solution that best meets those needs based off of our our breadth and depth of experience in this business. Yeah. And that's a big differentiator for you guys, I would imagine, over a mom and pop that just, you know, servicing two or three helicopters and, you know, you hope that they're maintaining them properly and getting them out there uh offshore.

But, you know, one of the things too in offshore oil and gas, there ever was an industry where time is money, it's that one, right? So, if you're on a million-dollar a day spread uh rig and uh the helicopter doesn't bring the main engineer that's going to run the job or the driller or whoever else is time is is really going to hurt them. It's going to hurt them in the wallet. Yeah. And you know, obviously there's other ways to get out there. They can take boats and there's a whole business and industry trying to come up with faster boats and stuff, but you know, those those things can be limited on, you know, weather weather, high seas, etc.