The confusion surrounding the coffee pot

I am not a student of the aviation industry. I know a little about the scheduled carriers I make use of here and there, but almost nothing about holiday carriers, charter airlines and the brands under which these operate.

So last week I found myself on a holiday flight branded Thomsonfly.

Nice confident, sunny branding, suggesting that what I’d probably thought of only as a hotel package company actually offered its own flights, too. Planes, attendants, documentation: all consistently branded in a happy ‘blue and beguiling smile’ signature which corporate marketers, brand strategists and creative branding consultants had almost certainly expended thousands of hours, and millions of pounds, to devise and then implement.

Only the coffee pots said ‘Britannia Airways’ on them.

Bummer.

Now as I said, I’m no aviation expert, so I’ve had to Google about to learn that Britannia (which was an independent airline) and Thomson, were both bought up in 2000 by the German company TUI, which decided in 2004 that all the planes (but not, presumably, all the coffee pots) would henceforth be branded Thomsonfly.

Not having access to this information at the time, I asked the flight attendant why her coffee pot said ‘Britannia Airways’, when her fuselage was so clearly labelled ‘Thomsonfly’.

She looked at the Britannia engraving on the coffee pot, thought for a second, and offered, “Well I suppose while they still work…”

Work? You think they’re working because they’re pouring coffee?

Noooo. They’re not working at all.

They’re not saying, “This company that you may have thought just arranged hotel packages actually operates a fleet of aeroplanes too and is a big, confident and trustworthy player in holiday scheduling”.

Instead, they are saying, “This company doesn’t take care of detail, can’t follow through its own branding programme as far as a coffee pot on its own plane, (may even, for all you know, have saved £0.50 by purchasing a secondhand coffee pot in a bankruptcy sale) and, all in all, is winging it.”

Dear Marketing People at Thomsonfly,

Buy new coffee pots. Brand them ‘Thomsonfly’ if you can afford to. Leave them unbranded if you can’t. Or, if you’re being led by accountants, take the old coffee pots into a metal workshop and have them polish the Britannia logos off the side.

You will not be charged for this branding consultancy.

Comments

[James R]

hehe, like it. really good point. two sides to every story or decision even, but your def right about what that decision sub-communicates