Tag: marketing

Alaska’s New Brand

ssegraves

Alaska Airlines, arguably the hometown airline of Seattle, Portland, and Anchorage, unveiled a their new brand and livery at an event yesterday in Seattle.

new_alaska_livery
In a blog post, they give details on why they are refreshing the brand and a few insights into why they went the direction they did.

“We’ve added 90 new markets in the past five years. As we continue to grow, we are updating the outward expression of our brand so it shows up bolder wherever we fly.”

Essentially, we now fly Boston to San Diego non-stop and want to make our logo simpler for that market. I get it, it is not like they were going to change the name of the airline or anything. The first thing that stands out to me though is how close the new tail livery looks to some of the low cost carriers and how the entire livery looks a little Southwest-ish. The second thing is what I pointed out to Seth yesterday, the multicolored cheat lines look like the engines are spewing out the Northern Lights.

southwestlivery

Maybe that’s what Alaska was going for. The colors also match up pretty well to the Seattle Seahawks, the Mariners, and Sound Transit System. Coincidence?

I am no branding or livery expert but I just find the new look to be less Alaska and more Spirit/Southwest/Frontier. Maybe that is what they were going for. There is even a hint of Eurowings in there. There is a pretty great breakdown of the entire brand, livery, and other customer facing materials at Under Consideration. Their impression? Underwhelmed.

Overall, it’s not a highly inspiring redesign and rather than double-down on the quirkiness and ruggedness of the brand equity established they have moved away to safer territory.

Maybe Alaska should have gone to an all retro livery… (to be fair, some of the colors do match up)

old_alaska

— Updated at 12:30pm PST

I should add, if employees like the new look and it motivates them to better serve customers, then I am all for it. From the video of the unveiling of the new brand it does seem like the employees are excited about it and that’s a good thing.

I’m Guessing There Will be an Air Canada PR Opening Soon

ssegraves

Air Canada lost a dog when one of their employees decided to take it on a walk during a delay. While a nice gesture, the dog’s guardian had left instructions that the dog not be allowed out of the crate except in an enclosed room. But, that’s not the worst part. When the local Sacramento CBS station e-mailed Air Canada about the incident, this is the response they received:

I think I would just ignore, it is local news doing a story on a lost dog. Their entire government is shut down and about to default and this is how the US media spends its time.

Clearly the e-mail was not meant for the CBS station but for a co-worker maybe? My guess is that the spokesman, Peter Fitzpatrick, is polishing up his resume. Be careful when sending e-mail, you never know when you are going to hit “Reply All”.

Update: It looks like Fitzpatrick has responded to his e-mail comments:

Fitzpatrick, a veteran public relations official, told the Star that he regretted this email, but to suggest he was callous or uncaring is “an unfair portrayal.”
He said the email was partly meant to be a joke, but he was exasperated with the line of questioning that he had no answers to.

You’re in PR, your whole job revolves around answering questions (even ones you don’t have answers for).