Welcome to the thirteenth issue of The Work This Week, a weekly roundup of new advertising, identity, and brand experience work from around the airline industry. This week, we’re back from hiatus with a new appearance by the Singapore Girl, big global account reviews by big global airlines, and a new airline identity that’s a little bit vanilla.
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Welcome to the eleventh issue of The Work This Week, a weekly roundup of new advertising, identity, and brand experience work from around the airline industry. This week, airline social feeds light up with news of the royal birth, Lufthansa dupes customers into eating airline food, and the airline Web site of tomorrow is here… today!
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Welcome to the ninth issue of The Work This Week, a weekly roundup of new advertising, identity, and brand experience work from around the airline industry. This week, Aeroflot celebrates its 90th anniversary, Singapore Airlines reveals a new cabin, and KLM redesigns its logo using the last font you’d expect.
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Welcome to the sixth issue of The Work This Week, a weekly roundup of new advertising, identity, and brand experience work from around the airline industry. This week, it’s the annual Cannes issue! Who won? Who lost? Who got blackout drunk and passed out on la Croisette? It’s all here! Except for “who lost” and “who got drunk,” because we keep things classy.
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There’s one facet of airline branding that’s subtle, yet intensely symbolic. And best of all, it doesn’t cost a thing. It’s the flight number.
In the age of rail, railroads often reserved lower numbers for their most prestigious trains. By the jet age, Pan Am used “flight 1″ for its fabled round-the-world service (flight 2 flew the same route, but in the opposite direction.) The flight an airline designates as “flight 1″ has powerful meaning. It may reflect the airline’s history (as in the cases of Southwest, JetBlue, and American.) Or it might reflect present priorities (as for Air Canada.) Sometimes flight 1 can give you a deep insight into an airline’s soul. And sometimes not.
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Virgin Atlantic is branding the ice cubes in its Upper Class cabin… by carving them in the shape of Richard Branson’s head.
No, not literally, unfortunately. But for someone interested in airline branding, there wasn’t really that much to see at Cannes this year anyway. Mary Wells, famous for branding Braniff Airlines, once said that hard times call for hard selling, and last year’s times were very hard indeed for the airline industry.
Unfortunately, Cannes Lions are rarely given out for 1/8-page newspaper ads announcing seat sales.
There were, however, some winners—or, really, three: Norwegian Airlines, which won a bronze outdoor Lion for its cute “Last one to leave please turn out the lights” bus shelter, Germanwings, which won a bronze Film Lion for a gutsy and hilarious spot that I’ve embeded below, and Virgin, which won all the rest. Read more
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.
So relaxing. So reassuring. So predictable. It’s just not a real airline ad unless it finishes with an airplane flying off into the sunset—or, in the case of Eastern Air Lines, flying directly at the camera from the sun. Hey, if your tagline is “The Wings of Man,” you’ve clearly got chutzpah to spare. The clips in this video span decades and this cliché shows no signs of going away. The only difference is now the sunsets are computer generated. Read more
