American Airlines Rebranding – or – What Would Betsy Ross Say?

Get the inside story.

This Thursday, 3/21, you will hear first hand from American Airlines about their decision to launch the airlines rebrand in January.  Better yet, this is an opportunity for your questions to be answered.  The New York American Marketing Association has arranged for executives from American and FutureBrand to discuss this high profile and highly controversial branding program.

Sign-up NOW at nyama.org 

Speakers:

Jill Surdek, Managing Director, Brand & Consumer Experience Strategy,  American Airlines

Sven Seger, Chief Creative Officer, FutureBrand

Time: 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Location:
McCann World Group Headquarters
622 3rd Avenue at 41st Street
18th Floor
Be sure to sign up in advance.  Our last event on mobile marketing sold out.

THE CONTROVERSY:

From Financial Times:

When American Airlines’ first Boeing 777-300ER entered service last week, it was sporting a new logo and exterior livery – the airline’s first rebrand in more than 40 years, and one that has had a turbulent reception in some quarters.

How American is it?  In Business Week  Massimo Vignelli — who designed the previous AA logo 45 years ago — had this to say:

It has no sense of permanence. The American flag is great. I’m designing a logo now for a German company, and I’m using black, red, gold, and yellow. Why? Because national colors have a tremendous equity. They’re much more memorable. It rings the bell of identification. But the American flag has 13 stripes, right? Not 11. Did American add only 11 stripes [to the flag on the tail] because they are in Chapter 11? I don’t think two more stripes would have been a disaster. And there are only two colors shown instead of all three. So is it a different flag?

11 Stripes or 13 Stripes?

You be the judge if Vignelli is right about the New AA vs. Old Glory:

 

Vs.

 

The controversy also rages within the branding community.  The insider website BRAND NEW received 246 comments for their review of the new AA logo.  That’s about 10x the number of comments a typical posting gets on that site.

So, a sneak preview of the inside scoop from Sven Seger and the rest of the team at MBLM and FutureBrand

Save the dates

Here are two upcoming events from the NYAMA in January:

On January 6th there is a NYAMA networking event at 47 East 29th Street, the Red Sky Lounge, from 6 to 8 pm.  It’s social networking the old fashioned way.

And on January 20th there is a real treat.  We’ll have 3 special guests speaking about How to manage a brand crisis in an age of social media.

Remember Steven Slater?  He’s the Jet Blue flight attendant who jettisoned his career this past August, making headlines around the world.  We’ll have Jenny Dervin from Jet Blue on hand to tell us how they handled that brand crisis!

Jet Blue in the News

We’ll have Kirk Stewart of APCO to give some insight into the influence of social media on the reputations of Nike and Toyota when those two brands had crises.

And we’ll have Erich Joachimsthaler of Vivaldi to share his views on the importance of Social Currency to brand reputation.  You may have seen his study on Social Currency in Fast Company and other publications.

Fast Company article on Social Currency

 

More details at nyama.org