Fly the Branded Skies

 

Agency: D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles

These are posts from Fly the Branded Skies about D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles.

Jingle: Ozark “We’re big on that” (1973)

Listen: Ozark Air Lines: “We're Big On That”

They don’t make airlines like Ozark anymore. That’s not nostalgia. The category no longer exists. Ozark was a local service airline. And the locals had something to prove.   Read more

Jingle: United “Fly the Friendly Skies” (1965)

Fly the friendly skies of United.

Listen: United Air Lines: “Fly the Friendly Skies”

“Fly the Friendly Skies” is without question the best-known airline tagline of all time, and it oughta be. United used it for more than 30 years.

That in itself is rare. Even rarer is the fact that for all those years, United employed the same advertising agency: Leo Burnett, Chicago.

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Tropes: Employee-Owners

Every kind of advertising has—well, let’s call them “conventions.” Airline advertising is no different. This is part of a series of posts on the clichés of airline advertising.

When airlines get into trouble, as they often do, they eventually end up being worth more dead than alive. But there’s one group of people that always has an interest in keeping the planes flying: the employees. Over the past few decades, a number of airlines have been saved — however temporarily — when employees took ownership stakes in them, usually in exchange for pay cuts.

And as soon as employees become stockholders, the airline advertises.


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Zombies!

Pan Am Systems freight carAn investor group announced in March that it has acquired the trademarks for Eastern Airlines and plans to launch a new carrier with that name.

But before they do, they may want to consider what happened to Pan Am. Because after 64 years, the storied Pan Am brand ended up not in the skies but on the rails.

The brand was sold off after the original Pan Am’s bankruptcy in 1991. In 1996, the blue Pan Am globe was flying once again on a single A300 christened the Clipper Fair Wind. But the second Pan Am didn’t last long; after a star-crossed merger with Carnival Air Lines, another Pan Am followed the first into bankruptcy.   Read more