Welcome to Flyby Wire, a weekly look at new advertising, identity, and brand experience work from around the airline industry. This week: look up! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s British Airways! (more…)
Archive for November, 2013
Jingle: “Aeroflot” (1969)
Friday, November 22nd, 2013Listen: Aeroflot: “Aeroflot”
In the 1960s, Aeroflot had something of a public relations problem. Although it was then the world’s largest airline — and a vital link for its vast motherland — its reputation for Soviet austerity was well-earned. On domestic routes, passengers endured indifferent service, chronically oversold flights, and uncomfortable aircraft.1 The situation was so dire that a 1960 column in Komsomolskaya Pravda, the official newspaper of the youth wing of the Communist Party, openly criticized the state-owned airline: “Unfortunately no genuine concern for passengers is felt in Aeroflot.”2
So Aeroflot did something distinctly un-Soviet: it turned increasingly to Western marketing techniques. Techniques that included a jingle sung by none other than Eduard Khil, Mr. Trololo himself. (more…)
- “Flying in Soviet Can Be a Picnic,” The New York Times (6 August 1967). [↩]
- “Poor Air Service Scored in Soviet,” The New York Times (17 October 1960): 53. [↩]
You may now use approved personal electronic devices
Thursday, November 21st, 2013
In celebration of the FAA’s decision to allow airline passengers to use their personal electronics gate-to-gate, I’ve redesigned Fly the Branded Skies to work on mobile devices. Everything should now look as good on your phone as it does on your desktop, and you should now be able to play jingles on your mobile device. If you find any bugs, please let me know! And stay tuned for more new content.
Image credit: Photograph by askpang. Ruined in Photoshop by me. Creative Commons.