Thursday, November 21, 2013

The "Friendly Skies" Are Back. (At Least the Tagline Is)


After many years of spending many millions of dollars on forgettable advertising, United Airlines has re-introduced its "friendly skies" tagline.  Through all the years that United was trying to create other branding messages, the "friendly skies" line wouldn't go away.  That's the power of a strong brand.  Pilots mentioned the friendly skies in their public address announcements ... as did flight attendants.  Why the airline ever abandoned the line is a mystery to me.  Sometimes marketers just get tired of a positioning line, even though it is incredibly well-entrenched in the consumer's mind.

The new campaign attempts to make the "friendly skies" mean something in terms of routes, in-flight service, equipment. on time performance and other attributes.  That's a nice evolution for the campaign.

The hard part is living up to the promise.  Let's see how friendly the skies really are.  

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