Aeroflot-The world's five star airline

AEROFLOT - THE WORLD’S FOUR STAR AIRLINE

The Soviet Union might have fallen as long ago as 1991, but negative perceptions about Russian brands, in particular Russia’s national airline Aeroflot, carried on far beyond the end of communism.

A cursory search of Internet traveller reviews from even ten years ago (2007) ago throws up gems such as “ The plane was very basic. The food was a joke”, “You’d get better food in an Indian prison” and “I was assaulted by one of the female staff on a runway in Moscow.”

Meanwhile Aeroflot has had several attempts at rebranding, for example in 2001, 2003 and 2007.

Fast forward to 2017 and things have finally changed. Earlier this year, Aeroflot was unveiled as the surprise choice for ‘most powerful airline brand in the world’ by Brand Finance, ahead of American Airlines, Delta and Emirates.

According to Brand Finance, which produces the rankings, Aeroflot received the accolade because of its “sponsorship of Manchester United, its young fleet, and its heavy investment in marketing, particularly in Asia.”

Aeroflot also won four star status from Skytrax, which in July contrasted the airline favourably with British Airways saying that it was “a ‘shining example of an airline that has transformed themselves’ – compared with BA, which ‘has not invested in the same way’.

Aeroflot the airline might have changed beyond recognition but perceptions of poor quality tend to be difficult to shift. According to Giorgio Callegari, Aeroflot’s deputy CEO for strategy doing so hangs on two elements in particular. First of all there is the on-going association with one of the most high profile football / soccer brands in the world - Manchester United. Though based in England, Manchester United is very much a global brand. For example in Russia it reportedly has eighteen million fans.

It is also Asia’s most popular football club, with David Prosperi of Man U’s former sponsor Aon stating, “Manchester United has no equal in sports when it comes to global brand awareness, particularly in Asia.”

That gives Aeroflot exposure in the important Far East market, where it competes with the likes of Finnair and the Gulf carriers for East / West traffic.

Secondly, the airline has launched a fairly simple and to the point advertising campaign, initially in the UK, with the strapline “the world’s four star airline” and listing some of the places you can fly to via Moscow (e.g. Beijing, Hong Kong, Delhi).

The inspiration according to Giorgio Callegari is actually the car maker Skoda, which during the early 2000s, successfully turned around its image of being a communist era car maker churning out old bangers, into being perceived as the high quality, low price arm of Volkswagen that it now is.

KEY TAKE-AWAY

Sometimes simple works best. The tieup with Manchester United is at its core a badging exercise with some promotional activity built in. However, it gets Aeroflot in front of tens of millions of TV viewers worldwide every time the team walks out onto the pitch and associates them with quality and success.

Meanwhile the ‘world’s four star airline’ campaign has a fairly straight forward message. When most people think of ‘four star’ they think of hotels and brands such as Hilton or Sheraton. High quality but crucially, not out of reach.