Well, the Big Game is less than a week away and, like everyone else, Fly the Branded Skies is taking advantage of the buzz without all the hassle of paying a few million dollars for a sponsorship. This is an index to airline Super Bowl ads of the past 46 years. It draws extensively on Adland’s extensive archive of Super Bowl spots, with a few added in from YouTube. (more…)
Archive for January, 2011
Super*bleep*
Monday, January 31st, 2011Seven question mark seven
Thursday, January 27th, 2011
The smart money says Boeing will soon launch a brand new replacement for the 737, starting from a blank sheet of paper, with entry into service by the end of the decade.
But all the debate over re-engining and airline economics is completely missing the most important question:
What are they going to call it? (more…)
Tropes: Employee-Owners
Sunday, January 23rd, 2011Every 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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Saturday, January 22nd, 2011It seems the worldwide coloured paint shortage continues to rage. Japan Airlines has announced a new, all-white livery that brings back the red crane logo that graced the tails of JAL’s aircraft for decades. The new livery strongly resembles, minus the cheatlines, the livery used by the carrier in the 1970s and 80s. Back then, JAL was a growing global powerhouse; now, as it teeters on the edge of oblivion, it’s not surprising the airline would want to hit the rewind button.
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Thursday, January 20th, 2011I’ve been told by a prolific collector of junior wings that the first 300 are easy. Today, I reached that milestone with this set of British Airways wings from the mid-eighties. To celebrate this and the arrival of a new macro lens, I’m going to take new photos of all my wings at higher quality. You can now click on the image to see the wings magnified — on my monitor, the magnified image is about three times life size. I’ll be adding more high-resolution images over the next couple weeks.
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Monday, January 10th, 2011In 1988, Saatchi & Saatchi created a commercial announcing that all Northwest Airlines flights would now be non-smoking. The spot so enraged another Saatchi client, tobacco and food giant RJR Nabisco, that they pulled their $100-million account, even though Saatchi didn’t do any cigarette advertising for them.
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Sunday, January 2nd, 2011According to the Wall Street Journal, there’s at least one kind of business reaping a huge windfall from recent airline mergers: companies that repaint airliners are reportedly seeing a huge boost in business.