American Airlines rebrand goes beyond the logo.
February 19, 2013 at 10:00 am
American Airlines announces a rebrand.
American Airlines recently launched its first major rebranding effort in decades. As part of the rebranding effort the airline replaced the iconic design by Massimo Vignelli with a new logo, quickly garnering the attention of marketing and business publications from Fast Company to Fox Business to Forbes. It should come as no surprise that within a matter of minutes, the new American Airlines logo was subjected to the assessment of millions of designers and branding experts – all of whom had strong opinions about the new identity. Many were outraged. Some called it atrocious. Some called it a disgrace. And even Massimo Vignelli himself expressed his disapproval. But before you pass judgment – if you haven’t already – there are a few things you should consider.
A quick history lesson.
Since 1934 American Airlines has been fundamental in the growth and success of American commercial aviation through a series of innovations that helped shape the industry. The company’s list of firsts include: the first profitable passenger-only flight route, the first airport lounge (Admirals Club at LaGuardia), the first electronic booking system, and the first commercial airline to hire a female pilot. Its impact on American travel is undeniable. Into the 90s, times were good, the airline was profitable – and like its raw metal aircraft, the brand continued to shine. In just a few years, the economic downturn in the United States would change everything. As conditions worsened in the early 2000s, American Airlines laid off thousands of employees, sold off subsidiaries, sold aircraft, reduced flights and did everything it could in a seemingly futile attempt to remain in business. But until two years ago, American Airlines had overlooked one of its most viable options.
A completely redesigned brand experience.
While the airline struggled financially, its brand — the perception of the airline in the minds of millions — struggled as well. As Mark Kingsley of Under Consideration recently put it, “Flying used to mean something.” More specifically, flying American Airlines used to mean something. So, in what might seem like a last ditch effort (after filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in 2011), American Airlines decided to make an investment in its brand. As part of this initiative, American Airlines and its branding partners have redesigned terminals, airplane interiors, added in-flight Wi-Fi to all new aircraft, and streamlined the on-boarding process to provide passengers with a more “modern, comfortable and connected experience.” They’ve re-architected their Admirals Club as well as business and first class with improved seating, better meal options and a more seamless check-in process. And to complete the initiative, American Airlines has developed a new training program for all employees designed to foster a “uniquely American experience,” a better culture and improved customer service for all. And, of course, to top it off they also introduced a new logo and new livery. Now, that’s what we consider a re-branding initiative!
Why is the conversation mostly about the logo?
Yet, as soon as the company announced its rebranding efforts, many of the same people who champion the concept of “brand,” and claim to build “brands” raised their voices in disapproval about the new logo – often glossing over the fact that, while American Airlines has in fact changed its logo, it has also completely reconsidered the American Airlines experience. There is an important, but sometimes ignored, difference between Design and Brand. In his critique, Massimo Vignelli is speaking the language of design. While design is an important part of this exercise, it’s not the most important. In my opinion, when it comes to brand, it’s important to remember that the logo is not the brand. In my opinion, the brand is anchored on the experience and how people feel about it. The logo is simply the graphic manifestation or visual representation of the brand. It is the shorthand that allows us to quickly recognize it among the other brands that clamor for our attention. It is a symbol of the brand, it is not the brand itself. The logo does not have the power to change the way that people feel about a company. It is the company’s values and actions that can do that, and therefore create an intimate and emotional connection which becomes the “brand”.
Success is measured by passengers not awards.
I like the way that Marty Neumeier, the Director of Transformation at Liquid Agency, defines a brand in his classic book, The Brand Gap. “A brand is a person’s gut feeling”, he wrote. American Airlines can’t control how people feel about the brand but they can certainly influence it. By way of this rebranding effort, American Airlines has made a powerful statement to passengers and employees around the world – a promise to provide a better experience. We all know that actions speak louder than words. In order to avoid the fates of other aviation icons like PanAm and Continental, American Airlines will need to take real action in order to live up to its recent promise. Just remember: If they succeed, it won’t be because American Airlines redesigned its logo. Or because the logo won a bunch of awards in branding or design competitions. In fact, it won’t matter whether we loved or hated the new paint scheme. If American Airlines succeeds, it will be because American Airlines invested in its brand. I think that the airline is off to a great start. But only time, and passengers, will see if the rebranding effort is successful.
What do you think?
Wether you agree or not, we would love to hear your opinions and insights. Please feel free to post a comment and we will be sure to reply ASAP. And, if you think others might find this article interesting, please feel free to share it using any of the Social Media buttons included.
About Kelly Rupp
Kelly Rupp is a Brand Strategist at Liquid Agency. He has spent the past 5 years building integrated branding programs for clients in the B2B technology, healthcare, consumer electronics, and lifestyle apparel industries. Unafraid to challenge the status quo, Kelly is always looking for different and better ways to think about the concept of brand. Kelly is passionate about the future of brand building and helping to define how brands behave in 2013 and beyond.
All great points, Kelly. Seems too often that the design community only focuses on the visual manifestation of the brand, but not the strategy and perspiration it took to have it executed. The rebrand was just the cost of reentry in the market for AA. Hopefully their employees will live up to the new bold promise!
Thanks Marc. The employees piece is huge. The people at American Airlines are the ones who have the ability to make this whole thing a reality. It would be really interesting to get a peak at what American Airlines is actually doing to indoctrinate and proliferate this new brand internally. In fact, it might even be more interesting than what they’re doing externally.
Agree completely with your observation that many so called brand “experts” decry the confusion of a brand with the logo, yet immediately critique any new logo as either a good or bad brand change. The brand experience is completely lost in their calculus. Design lives in service to a brand. Logo design is simply part of that service. A highly visible part, but only a part. It’s amazing that “your logo is not your brand” needs repeating ad infinitum because brand experts continually confuse the issue publicly. We can be our own worst enemy.
Thanks for the feedback Mojo.
It is a bit baffling isn’t it? To their credit, the people of the internet didn’t bash on the American Airlines rebrand as much as I’d anticipated. But there were still plenty who shook their finger at AA for this initiative.
I think a lot of the pessimism has to do with where we receive this kind of news. Many online publications and blogs choose to cover only a piece of it (a design blog talks about the logo, a business blog talks about the business implications) and people naturally react based on context. For me, it’s a reminder that we’ve always got to take a step back in order understand the bigger picture.
I couldn’t agree more. “A logo is not a brand” is my war cry; not a day goes by where I don’t find myself sharing it with someone. Usually, not for the first time. Brands are defined by their reputation and customer experiences, not their visual elements. And yet, as visual beings, we often associate those very elements as the summation of an organization’s definition and worth. It is both the blessing—and curse—of design.
And while I love Vignelli’s original design, I would counter by saying that today’s brands are defined by their ability to remain relevant—which sometimes means having the courage to transform and adapt to exponentially changing technologies, strategies and public perceptions. I have a hard time believing that ANY logo—even one created by a master—will exist 25 years from now.
All in all, a great article—and a promising new chapter for American Airlines. I’ll be interested to see what happens down the road.
From a design standpoint, I love it. It’s a beautiful mark. I love the condensed typography. It’s fresh. I’ve flown on American once in the last ten years and it wasn’t a great experience. Maybe the fresh design will lure me back in? If it does, then they better not screw it up or all that fresh approach will seem like a lie.
Very interesting article, and nice to see something on airline branding – which I am of the opinion does indeed occupy its own, unique niche in the branding universe.
To those of us in the know, the earliest intrinsic concept we learn is that a brand is not a mere logo, it’s how people feel about a company and what can be done to harbour or alter these feelings.
But to many people in the world however, the notion of a ‘brand’ is in fact the logo – it’s the silver apple shaped emblem on the back of your phone or international gastro-reassurance of a golden ‘M’. People feel more precious about this notion when they are of the belief it is making a statement about wider society, or cultural representation. And here in lies the difficult niche that airlines occupy – they form a tangible representation of entire countries and cultures.
Of course this is limited to the type of airline – Virgin for instance occupy a realm of new, hip fashionable travel. Virgin Atlantic, Virgin America or Virgin Australia form part of a internationally acclaimed airline group, with the geographies of their operations forming ancillary functions to the core brand. But for the likes of American, dabbling with the tangible public image not only makes a statement about them – but also America – and hence the unprecedented interest.
A prime other example here is British Airways’ rebrand in 1997 with artwork by international artists on the tails. I loved the look – a representation of the airline’s global nature. But the wider public were not in agreement, as if the very fabric of British patriotism was being eroded; most famously represented by Margaret Thatcher publicly covering a scale model’s tail with her handkerchief. The tails were scraped and now every plane wears a stylised national flag. The look is nice, but repetitive.
Time will tell whether the American logo is a success or not, as you rightly point out it won’t be in aircraft paint but if the sum of all these rebranding efforts encourages people to fly with them.
Such a great point about the countries American and British Airlines are inherently attached to. And probably a good reason that this rebranding initiative was relatively “safe” when compared to game changers like Virgin or even Jet Blue.
I bet lots of folks in the design or brand community would have preferred American to push the envelope and be a bit more disruptive. My guess would be that the people at American knew they needed to walk a fine line. Make a statement but do it quietly.
In the 1960s Mary Wells and Braniff focused on the experience first and changed everything. Yet somehow, airlines still can’t get the experience right. Why is this? You’re absolutely right, Kelly… it’s about so much more than the logo. I just hope everything else that is necessary to really make the brand work happens. The logo is useless until the experience proves it valuable. Now lets go back 48 years to where it all started… the long-defunct Braniff… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3_aNtQFsLk
Nice article, Kelly. It is in fact amazing that people still confuse “the logo” with “the brand”. I just posted a picture on Instagram ( @alfredo_liquid ) of a spread from “Brand Gap” by Marty Neumeier. The image is obviously inspired by the famous painting by Magritte (Ceci n’est pas une pipe) through which the surrealist master was highlighting the fact that a painting is the representation of an object – it is in fact not the object itself – much like a logo is the representation of a brand and not “the brand”. I look forward to seeing whether the next time I fly on American their new logo will represent something “new” about the brand through improved experiences. And I will not comment on whether the new logo is better than the old one, because the last thing you want to do is get Massimo all pissed off. :) Thanks for contributing your point of view to our blog!
You are absolutely right that the brand is so much more than a logo or advertising. But, logos and ads tend to act like lightening rods since they are most visible to the greatest number of people. That probably has a lot to do with “brand” getting defined by logo and advertising much of the time, even in board rooms.
Thanks Tilly.
No doubt that the logo, advertising and other pieces of external stimuli act like lightning rods. Like Daniel mentioned above, for the general public, the logo really can seem like THE brand. And it’s to be expected that the general public should react in various ways to logo changes like this one.
I guess my concern is more for the brand community; the people who react negatively to a logo change despite considering themselves experts in “brand.” If we’re ever going to get this ” brand is not your logo” message across to the folks in board rooms, we all need to be on the same page.
We designers aren’t that different from non-designers. We KNOW that a logo is only a symbol, but we have visceral reactions to changes just the same.
When UPS updated its trademark to become a hyper-realistic shield that replaced Paul Rand’s beloved line drawing, they did it well, and for solid strategic reasons. Yet the design community jumped all over it: How DARE you show such disrespect for the master! OUR master! The truth is, Paul Rand’s design was a toss-off. He did it one day, and his only research was the applause of his tiny daughter. “It’s a present, daddy!” she said, pointing to the drawing of a tied-up package at the top of the shield. In fact, Rand’s trademark was just one trendy update in a whole line of updates going back decades.
Rand himself would have shrugged it off. He believed that no matter how beautiful or clever or ugly or stupid a trademark was, it ultimately got its power from the meaning of the company, not the graphics. In other words, a logo is not a brand.
One can jump all over the new look of American Airlines, proclaiming it to be dynamic, refreshing, promising – or disappointing, disrespectful of tradition, just not the same, alien, etc. We can reassure ourselves as designers that we know a logo is not a brand. We can only hope the public gets this point, too.
What is inescapable is that it is this visual re-imagining of what American Airlines is that stops people in their tracks. It makes a statement that attempts to balance what we know about this iconic airline and promising something new, even if what is “new” is a restoration of all things we used to expect of American, or any airline, for that matter. Therefor, this new image for American is making a promise to the public that this great airline is not going away, but rather doubling down on asking for your business.
This new identity is the visual aspect of making a promise to the public that they will be rewarded with a most satisfying travel experience if they choose American. Yes, this experience is what is the essence of the brand. If the brand/experience keeps its promise, then American will succeed. It is way too soon to pass judgment on the brand, for it has to be experienced by a sizable number of the public. All that has gone into elevating the American Airlines travel experience – the brand – cannot be sensed and reported on immediately. One has to go through the whole brand experience, from buying a ticket to getting through the airport to the flight itself to arrival and reclaiming one’s baggage, in order to make a comprehensive statement.
I always felt that the red white and blue striping on that gleaming silver body was the best part of American’s image. The AA on the tail with the eagle between always struck me as a bit stiff. The new imagining of the look of American keeps what has always attracted me and has carried it further. I find it most imaginative that the blue field projects the images of the American flag’s star field, but is in fact stripes, as if to convey that this aircraft is moving at too great a speed to make out each star. The whole image is unmistakably American, both the airline’s iconography and the country it represents.
So, Mr. Vignelli, will this look last 25 years? Perhaps, perhaps not, but it is a worthy successor to your design.
Hi Kelly, wow… great article. Thank you. The greatest design agency can give any corporation the greatest logo on earth and a great visual brand identity package… but branding is so much more and yes… it is the customer’s experience-how you enchant the customers, the management-how the service and products are being run, are you giving value for money? The location-the ambience, even your employees… what they think of the company and what they are saying about the company, how are the employees responding to customers needs… All matter.
I can surely understand that there a BIG NEED for a brand change for American Airlines AND UNITED as well… they are really bad compared to Virgin and Singapore Airlines… they should really see how the masters market and maintained their brand. Going back to the logo change, if companies want to change the logo, let it be an evolution first, before a revolutionary, as there is equity in the original branding. And it better be stronger than the original logo design and make impact!!
If we are just talking about the logo… I wondered if they did the “People Test”? It is a survey to test market how the logo is being received in different groups of people.
Just the logo by itself, it does not say American Airlines to me. But I like the tail end graphics… maybe the letter AA could be incorporated in the graphics. Changing the darker blue to a lighter does make the company more contemporary. Maybe that is all it needs… an evolutionary design change.
With the resurgence of all things classic/vintage, due in part to AMC’s Mad Men series, I think the timing of the rebranding effort is spot on. Yes, the industry has changed because of the obvious economic woes, but what AA is saying is that flying is something special, and like a classic cocktail or a classically cut, well-crafted suit, some people won’t mind paying a premium for the experience. Obviously this goes completely against the low-cost, no frills airlines all jockeying for position to dominate. This is a bold and gutsy move, right? As such, a subtle evolution of Vignelli’s AA logo would only be counterproductive to the true mind shift they’re banking on. Who knows if it’s the right move, but it will absolutely be interesting to follow.
Thanks Kelly and well done.
“We’re American Airlines, something special in the air.” That jingle always resonated with me. I believed it, even if American eventually was not able to sustain it. I hope that American can reclaim the charisma that accompanied this claim. It’s been a long time, but if American backs its new brand and image with a performance that gives the flying public an alternative to bare-bones travel in an airborne sardine can, they will win back the place and the esteem of the public they previously held.
Well said Kelly. Great article!