United - Her Art Here

Painting aircraft in a special livery is of course a tried and tested airline marketing tactic.

The practice has been around for decades, in this issue we’ve featured a number of airlines with custom designs, including Air Serbia and Norwegian. We also devoted the lead article in our August 2018 issue to it.

Once in a while though, a special livery project catchesour eye, that’s different from the norm. That’s the casewith United’s “Her Art Here” campaign.

Launched to coincide with Women’s History Month, which took place inMarch, the competition will result in two women winning the chance tohave their artwork appear on the side of a Boeing 757 aircraft.

Linking into key destinations for United, one piece of art or special livery is meant to visually represent New York / New Jersey (with United being the largest airline at Newark), and the other is meant to represent California.

The focus on female artists comes as the US National Museum of Women in the Arts found that while 51% of today’s artists are women, less than 13% of art on display in museums is by women artists

To launch the campaign, United workedwith artist Shantell Martin in creating twopieces of street art - one in Los Angelesand one in Brooklyn, NYC. Each of thetwo murals showcased had interactiveairplane windows, that led to videos withmore information about the competition.

In April, three finalist designs for eachof New York / New Jersey and California,were put forward for a public vote.

One finalist, New Jersey native CorinneAntonelli, who is studying illustrationat Ringling College of Art and Design,submitted a design featuring iconiclandmarks such as the Statue of Liberty,with a globe in the middle.

Another, Lila Ash, produced a design which is meant to represent “communication, union and connection symbolized by the hands, which soar above the skies amongst the native California trees.”

The two winners are due to be announced in May, after which they will work with Shantell Martin in putting their winning creations on a United Boeing 757 Aircraft, which will in turn result in each winning livery being flown 1.6 million miles every year. Each winner will also receive $10,000.

In addition to the launch murals in NYC and LA, the whole campaign is backed up by an impressive micro-site, which features an introductory video from artist-mentor Shantell Martin, and another one from Bebe O’Neill, United’s System Chief Pilot, who manages the carrier’s 12,600 pilots.

The Shantell Martin video has at time of writing been seen over 600k times on YouTube. The initiative has also had extensive coverage in the marketing press, as well as in a number of aviation blogs and publications.

United’s willingness to think a little laterally when it comes to special liveries is shown by the fact that it worked with agency Laundry Service, on the campaign. An agency, whose tagline is “Make Amazing Sh!t”