In the first installment of our “Airline Livery and Airline Branding” investigative series, we look at some of the worst integrations of corporate branding with airline livery. These airline liveries represent serious design flaws and gaps in the process of turning corporate airline branding into airline livery. Read the rest of this entry »

Marketing and branding are everywhere. You can’t escape the pull of corporate logos, advertisements, and thinly-veiled messages present in everything you do. The average American, according to Consumer Reports, is exposed to 247 advertisements per day, and marketeers are forever on the lookout for the next big way to send their corporate sales pitch out to a large – but targeted – audience.

This, perhaps surprisingly, takes us to the airport. The commercial airline industry carries an estimated 2 billion passengers a year, who spend anywhere from $1 (with low-cost carriers like RyanAir and easyJet) to over $100,000 (for a spot on the maiden flight of Singapore Airlines’ new Airbus A380).

In the departure lounge, waiting for a flight, this is a rich – and captive – audience. So what can airlines do to market to all of these people who will fly and will spend money? Read the rest of this entry »

The Boston Celtics and Green Bay Packers are proving this year that you can win with green. So why are the new Tampa Bay Rays logos and uniforms stepping back towards generic?

The Tampa Bay Rays (nee “Devil Rays”) unveiled a new logo this week. In addition to now formally being known as the Rays (as in “ray of sunshine” instead of “manta ray fish”), the Rays have adopted a dramatically different color scheme. When the team entered the league in 1998, they sported white jerseys with a gradient of blue-green-yellow in the lettering; later, these uniforms changed to a more subdued dark green, which was a step in a nice direction.

Now, the Rays have dumped that color scheme too, in favor of new Tampa Bay Rays uniforms – blue with light blue accents and a “touch of gold”. Read the rest of this entry »