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OK, so if the government bodies give it their blessing, which they probably will, United Airlines and Continental Airlines are going to merge into one airline called United. It will be the nation’s largest airline.
So what does this have to do with this blog? Marketing and advertising.
The combined airlines have announced:
United parent UAL Corp. agreed to merge with Continental in a stock swap valued at more than $3 billion that will create the world’s biggest airline by traffic. United’s name and Chicago headquarters will be retained, while airplanes will be repainted in Continental’s colors and include its globe logo on the tail.
– Courtesy of Business Week
The REAL beneficiaries of such a merger are not the passengers (trust me on this one) but rather the sign painters and the airplane painters…they are going to get rich off this deal.
First off, the United “U” logo, color scheme and typeface will be history. I liked the typeface but the rest of it who cares.
The choice seems to be to keep the Continental globe and typeface with the United name. Ostensibly, all the planes and gates will get the new look.
I predict within two years of the closing, they’ll also have a new, completely different system wide logo.
By that time, their systems will have merged, their staffs will be assimilated and a new ad agency will be brought on board (if they decide not to go outright to a branding agency like Landor.)
And the planes will then be repainted and the gate signs will change again. What they are proposing here is patchwork to make it feel internally and externally like a meshing, merging, happy pile of airline kumbaya. Graphically, though, it ain’t there. You’ll probably just have to put up with it for a few years until the change is done. Everything will then get repainted…again.
If you are just now coming out of college with a Fine Arts degree, maybe you want to brush up on your painting skills cause there’s money to be made on these birds over the next 3-4 years.
Tags: advertising, logo design, marketing by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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