For all 20 of these well-known airlines, there were no failing grades (F). This isn’t necessarily a compliment towards the branding and livery design so much as an acknowledgement that, however misguided in design, each of these airlines is well-recognised on a national, if not international, scale. They’re lucky - multi-million dollar marketing departments can save a lot of egg faces when it comes to brand recognition. That’s what money buys.

What money doesn’t necessarily buy is style, design or a greater sense of purpose for a brand. The airlines that didn’t do so well in our investigation failed on at least some of these points, sometimes mightily. Whether they were remiss in acknowledging nationalism in their brand or were simply too boring design-wise, some big-budget airlines didn’t make the grade when it came to livery branding. Read the rest of this entry »

There were, at last count, over 9 million Google search results for “blog directory.” This speaks not only to the popularity of blogs themselves, but the mainstream, money-making possibilities associated with blogs. We’re talking “making money by NOT writing a blog” here - directories, listings, paid blogging, blog ads, etc. So what does it take to stand out from this crowd?

Unique selling points have always been the key to success in business, but that’s certainly not the only way; look at the millions of dot com copycats out there hawking the same or similar products (Wikipedia and eBay’s competitors come to mind, although we also freely acknowledge these guys were not necessarily “firsts” in their respective fields). But uniqueness DOES count for something too, as does connecting with an audience, and rssHugger - a blog directory and rss reader - accomplishes both. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past two months we’ve examined commercial airline branding and its impact on airline livery. We’ve seen some horrible, incongruous designs (China Southern Airlines), outdated looks (American Airlines) and liveries that were just plain bland and unimaginative (Air France). We’ve also come down pretty hard on airlines that disregard national identities (Lufthansa) and those that just, for whatever reason, never quite got the branding right, let alone the livery (All Nippon Airways).

Now that those sixteen featured airline liveries are behind us, what does work for distinctive, unique airline livery and airline branding? The four commercial airlines in the last part of our series offer a glimpse at how airline liveries and corporate identities can successfully merge to create a unique and unifying brand identity. Read the rest of this entry »

The first three parts of our “Airline Livery and Airline Branding” investigative series have shown that, despite multi-million dollar marketing budgets, airlines often get branding wrong when it comes to their airline liveries. In this penultimate installment of our series, we’ll examine five airlines who are on the right track with their liveries. But perhaps more intriguingly, these airlines represent hail from three separate continents, companies old and new, and approach their branding from diverse perspectives.

As we fly at supersonic speeds above the clouds and towards the top of our list, the diversity in this section of our investigation goes to prove that branding can be done - and done well - in a myriad of different ways. Read the rest of this entry »

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is awaiting results from a commission studying ways to reduce traffic and carbon emissions in Manhattan. The results are likely to include a congestion charge for entering Manhattan, modeled after the congestion charge in London, England.

New York - the “City that Never Sleeps” - is also the “City that Swells”, growing from 1.6mil people in Manhattan alone to 2.8mil during working hours. This says nothing of tourists, who also flock to the borough and its many landmarks. Although New York is known for its public transportation system (72% of Manhattan residents use mass transit, compared with an average of 5% across the rest of the United States), that’s still not enough to quell the traffic.

Bloomberg’s congestion charging plan would put more money into public transportation, while also making a move to cut dangerous pollution levels within the city. Read the rest of this entry »