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Airline: Wien Air Alaska

These are posts from Fly the Branded Skies about Wien Air Alaska.

ICAO Code: WAA

Wien Air Alaska Wings

Tropes: Those other guys…

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.

Say you’re a regional airline trying to compete against the established mainline carriers, and you want to make a television commercial. What do you do? Simple! Follow this easy four-step process.

Step one. Cast an actor with comical features to play a businessman. (Bear in mind the advertising formula discovered in the 1980s: large nose + wide-angle lens + close-up = comedy.) Pepper in a few characters from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

Step two. Shoot a commercial in which the businessman flies on a different, fictional airline. Make the other airline resemble a train to the gulag.

Step three. Add a comic soundtrack, preferably using a tuba.

Step four. Record a sardonic voiceover that starts with “Those other guys…”

Follow these steps, and what do you get? You get this. (Agency: Livingston & Company)

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