I love flying and I’ve flown quite a lot recently, everyone from Etihad to Easyjet. (More Easyjet unfortunately). I used to choose BA every time. It felt homely, it offered good service, reasonable food, and I did not treated like an inconvenient idiot.
So I ought to have liked BA’s recent Big Ad campaign, said to have cost £20m, from BBH who make excellent ads. A return to form, a confident, forward-looking statement of intent?
Instead I saw an ad intended to be nostalgic which just felt a bit dated. It’s meant to be about customer service, but it comes across as rather self-obsessed.
And for some reason the agency seems to think that showing lots of aircraft (from different eras) flying together will make viewers' hearts sing, rather than make them think of mid-air collisions.
I know that harking back to emotive, bygone eras helps to reinforce the brand's heritage and dial up implicit trust, which is clearly very important for an airline. But I could not help feeling that the brand came across as rather out of touch with the idea of service (ironically).
I can understand why some current and former employees love it. I can imagine that the client is very happy with it. But customers?
They could win me back. I want to want to fly BA, but I think I would have to feel that the service really had improved, that they were interested in me, rather than just their own a long history of being fine chaps flying with great courage.
