Coworking with John Franklin

Each Tuesday, we spotlight Marketing Brew’s readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.

John Franklin has taken an untraditional path to marketing. At 17, he joined the Royal Air Force in the UK, serving as a maintenance and safety officer for 21 years. “During that time, I was awarded an MBE (one award down from a knighthood) by the queen at Buckingham Palace for a safety campaign during the Gulf [War],” he told Marketing Brew over email.

In 2011, he joined the European Union Aviation Safety Agency—which he describes as “like the FAA for Europe”—where he initially analyzed aircraft accidents. Since 2019, he’s led its safety promotions team, a role that involves leading “a team of experts who promote and market safety initiatives” across the European Aviation Community.

“Once other teams have analyzed safety occurrences and identified the things we need to do as an industry to keep the traveling public safe, we then promote this to the industry,” he told us.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in marketing? I lead a team of safety marketeers in a public regulator for aviation in Europe (kind of like the FAA across 31 countries). We create content for aviation professionals and private pilots to help prevent accidents and keep the traveling public safe.

Favorite project you’ve worked on? Our post-Covid “Ramp-Up” campaign to make sure flying opened up again without any problems, despite quite a few pilots and other staff not having been near an aircraft for a while.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? Working in the public sector, I have to pick a classic public-safety announcement. In the UK, everyone of a certain age crossed the road safely thanks to the Green Cross Code Man. The actor later became Darth Vader in the original Star Wars films.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile? That I’m a little older than the average marketing person, but thankfully I had an easy newspaper round in the 1970s.

What’s one marketing-related podcast, social account, or series you’d recommend? The Twitter account of Tom Moylan (@moylato) a guru of public engagement in Europe. He’s our Yoda.