MEAB is here with the real questions for you this year, like: “What if Manufactured Spend, Loyalty, and Travel hacking companies were Vice Presidents?” Hard hitting stuff I know! Also, it’s slow during the last week of the year so I guess let’s go:
- Spiro Agnew: Clearly the spirit of Spiro is best embodied in Southwest Airlines and its controversy over the reasons behind possibly the worst airline meltdown in history, making its big brother Delta (Nixon) look like an angel in comparison.
- Dan Quayle: I don’t think anyone needed to think hard about this one — Plastiq is the Dan Quayle of payment processors for plenty of reasons, but most notably because their SPAC Colonnade has an extra “n”.
- Al Gore: Hilton embodies Gore’s drive, for inventing the “breakfast benefit”, which wasn’t actually new.
- Dick Cheney: Clearly Marriott Bonvoy, because it shoots its members in the face. (Of course this one isn’t quite as cut and dry as the others because in Cheney’s case it was an accident.)
- Gerald Ford: American Airline’s new loyalty points scheme accidentally became the best hack in the travel hacker’s quiver without ever being elected, after its old program stepped down for bad behavior.
- Aaron Burr: This one was the hardest to pinpoint because intrigue and treason runs rampant in loyalty program devaluations, but the Banana Republic card and its in treasonist infighting with Synchrony bank followed by seeking quarter at Barclays takes the proverbial cake.
Happy Thursday!
MEAB’s official 2022 tee-shirt.