Brooke Staggs wrote a blog post detailing 13 highlights at Ontario International Airport. I’m not going to go through all 13, but I did want to highlight three of them.
Yes, Ontario Airport is international
Staggs highlighted the, um, arrival of a new airport at ONT: STARLUX Airlines, flying nonstop to and from Taipei, Taiwan.
STARLUX flies from Ontario to Taipei four days a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday). Because you cross the international date line, the flight takes two days (but really less than a day).
Existing international service expands
Of course, Volaris has been at ONT for some time, but this year they added flights to Los Cabos (SJD), León (BJX) and Morelia (MLM). This is in addition to its existing service to Guadalajara (GDL), and totals 28 weekly flights in all with at least three flights per week to each destination.
On the domestic front
United Airlines flies nonstop from Ontario to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. These are daily flights year-round. Somehow I got the idea that they are seasonal, but they are not.
If you want Portillo’s but don’t want to drive all the way to Moreno Valley or Buena Park, just drive to Ontario and fly to O’Hare.
In early 1968, two boys found a dead body in New York’s East Village. There was no identification on the man, and no one in the neighborhood knew him. He was fingerprinted and buried in a mass grave, identified by the NYPD nearly two years later.
Potter’s Field monument, Hart Island. From Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 4.0.
In the 1960s, fingerprint identification of deceased persons—a laborious process in those days—often happened because the deceased had a criminal record.
His first arrest was in 1956, but he was not convicted of any crime until 1961.
“On May 1, 1961, he was arrested for attempting to cash a check that had been stolen from a liquor store the previous January, and at the same time was also charged with driving under the influence of drugs. He pled guilty to both charges and was sentenced to six months of treatment for drug addiction at the California Institute for Men at Chino.”
Driscoll reportedly cleaned up (his drug of choice was heroin), went east to New York City, and even achieved some fame.
“[H]e purportedly settled into Andy Warhol’s Greenwich Village art community known as “The Factory.” During this time, he also participated in an underground film entitled Dirt, directed by avant-garde filmmaker Piero Heliczer.”
But this was not Driscoll’s first film. He had been in a few films earlier in life.
And he provided the voice for the lead character in the later Disney movie Peter Pan.
Yes, Bobby Driscoll was a child star for Disney and other studios before appearing in Dirt.
But right after Driscoll’s voice became famous in Peter Pan, Disney declined to renew his contract. The reason? Acne…and the fact that he wasn’t a cute kid any more.
AI generated by Grok.
This led to his tailspin, which eventually led to his fingerprinting.
Another SoCal Tech Forum presentation on Saturday, this one on banking technology from Carey Ransom of BankTech Ventures.
FoundrSpace.
Only a small reference to financial identity, but excellent nonetheless. While I live-posted the event here on my personal LinkedIn account, I wanted to summarize my three main takeaways from Bredemarket’s perspective.
One: Differentiate
Yes, community banks need to differentiate. Perhaps back in the 1980s before the advent of national banks, community banks could offer a standard suite of services for their communities. But now they’re competing against national banks that do business in their prospects’ communities, and in their prospects’ phones. (We will get to phones in a minute.)
One example Ransom gave: why do community banks offer credit cards? Are their credit cards better than the credit cards from the Really Big (Banking) Bunch? Probably not.
But unlike the Capital Ones and Chimes of the world, community banks know their communities. And they know what local businesses need, and are ideally suited to deliver this. (We will get to services in two minutes.)
Yes, I know that Bank of America may have someone attending and sponsoring your local events, but that person is not Brian Moynihan. And if you don’t know who Moynihan is, your prospects don’t know him either.
But John, you may be saying to yourself, you can’t bank on a phone. How do you deposit checks? And how do you get cash?
Well, let’s look at this:
Bredemarket hasn’t received a check in over three years, but when one of my clients was paying me by check, I would use my phone to take a picture of it and deposit it.
And as for cash, this is needed less and less, especially since many merchants take Apple Pay and Google Pay.
In fact, bank branches are so irrelevant to today’s—and tomorrow’s—bank prospects and customers that Ransom referred to a $3 million dollar bank branch as a really expensive billboard. Probably none of the people who are reading this post WANT to go into a bank branch.
And those that do? Here’s a little secret: if the average age of the people who bank at your bank is in their 70s, they will…um…not be long-term bank customers. The 18 year olds that will bank for decades? They’re opening accounts on their phones. Can they use a phone to open an account at your bank? And why would they do so? (See the differentiation discussion above.)
Three: Supplement
One way a bank can differentiate is via the services they offer.
At the most basic level, a bank can make money by loaning the funds they receive from deposits.
But they can offer many more services to 21st century clients, thanks to legislation such as the Gramm-Leach-Billey Act that allow financial holding companies to own financial or complementary firms.
And not just investments and wealth management.
Ransom provided an illustrative example: cybersecurity.
Banks need to have expertise in cybersecurity to stay alive, and to comply with Know Your Customer and other financial regulations.
So why not offer cybersecurity services to their customers?
This not only gives the banks another revenue stream, but also reduces the risk that their own customers will experience fraud from hacks.
Four: Market
I know I said there were three takeaways. I lied.
Ransom also noted that CapitalOne spends 20% on marketing, including everything from TV ads to cafes. Your typical community bank spends much less, maybe 1%.
How are your prospects going to know what differentiates your bank if they don’t have awareness of those differentiators?
Or perhaps you need proposal or analysis services.
Bredemarket, a provider of content, proposal, and analysis services to technology (and identity) firms, can work with you to create the words you need. Learn about my offerings and book a free meeting here.
“As many of you know, the property is currently closed and now in the foreclosure process.”
The GoFundMe is trying to raise $26,000.
“Even though foreclosure has begun, it is not yet final. With your support, we still have a chance to preserve the property and cover urgent expenses. Every donation will go directly toward utilities, loan payments, and essential operating costs needed to try to reopen its doors…”
Bredemarket 