Vietjet-The Vietjet Bikini Collection

VIETJET - THE VIETJET BIKINI COLLECTION

There is a saying that any publicity is good publicity, and Vietnamese airline VietJet has certainly had plenty of it recently.

As a low cost airline which serves Vietnam, South East Asia and China, you wouldn’t necessarily expect to see it get worldwide coverage outside the region.

Yet, a calendar launched by the airline has seen it achieve just that. Of course, this is not a calendar featuring scenic holiday destinations or the airline’s newly acquired A321 aircraft. Instead, it features bikini-clad models.

VietJet has made a name for itself over the years as the ‘bikini airline’. For example, 2012, the airline was fined for having five beauty contest finalists perform “an in- flight bikini show” without first gaining permission, on its maiden flight to the tourist hub of Nha Trang.

Meanwhile, earlier this year, Vietjet had to do something fairly unusual for an airline - it had to promise to make sure all its staff would be fully clothed. This was as VietJet launched flights to Jakarta, with Indonesia of course being the world’s biggest Muslim-majority country.

At a press conference, VietJet’s deputy director for commercial affairs, Jay L Lingeswara, told journalists that the airline only featured bikini-clad flight attendants on “specific occasions” and said that services to Jakarta would be appropriate for the Indonesian market (which includes serving Halal food).

One of those special occasions that VietJet talked about is the annual calendar. Rather than actual staff, the airline recruited professional models who posed in red and yellow (the VietJet colours) lingerie.

This includes, Celine Farach, a 20-year-old American musician and model who has almost a million followers on Instagram.

Different pages in the calendar feature models draped over the cockpit seats, on the luggage carousels, and in front of VietJet aircraft. Bizarrely, VIetJet says that the aim is to “showcase the airline’s high quality service.”

Needless to say, VietJet’s calendar has both gone viral and has been controversial. As Reuters reports, critics point out that VietJet’s approach objectifies women, and sexualsies the image of flight attendants and passengers at a time where sexual harassment is a growing issue for the airline industry.

The airline remains unrepentant, with VietJet’s female billionaire owner, Thi Phuong Thao claiming that showing women in this way is actually empowering given Vietnam’s conservative culture.

And according to Luu Duc Khanh, VietJet's managing director, “We are not upset when people associate us with the bikini image. If that makes people delighted and happy, then we’ll be happy.”

VietJet is not the only airline to have used bikini wearing staff as a marketing stunt. In 2014 Irish LCC Ryanair produced its own bikini calendar with proceeds of the sales going to a cancer charity.

KEY TAKE-AWAY

Vietjet’s approach is certainly unusual, we will will give them that. However it falls down on a number of counts. First of all, it is clearly sexist and demeans what is a serious job that requires skill, professionalism and high levels of customer care (being a flight attendant). Secondly, you could argue it does nothing to tell you what flying with VietJet is actually like. The airline claims that the calendar promotes a high quality service. How so? How many people who own the calendar will see anything other than the models?

As the Jakarta flight launch showed, it could cause problems for VietJet in certain markets and it is not what a mature brand does. You can still be fun and creative without going down this road, as the hundreds of articles and case studies we’ve produced in these reports demonstrate.

Indeed it is worth noting that Ryanair’s repositioning, which saw them adopt a more professional and customer focused image, came shortly after the 2014 calendar launch. In a sense, the calendar was the last campaign from the ‘old’ Ryanair, it would be difficult to imagine the Ryanair of 2018 doing something similar.