Perhaps the biggest challenge I’ve had in my career to date, and overcame was rebranding an entire airline in just 30 days.

The story goes like this…The CMO of Alaska Airlines (a former client) came to us to step in and re-brand Alaska Airlines. She was under pressure from the CEO, Exhausted from a failed 2 year attempt to do this with another agency. The CEO was going to trash the rebrand, and keep the existing, very dated brand in play. She asked him for one more chance and 30 days to deliver a whole new approach, with an entirely different firm. That is where I and my team stepped in. Knowing we had 30 days, we broke down the assignment. Brand strategy, voice, Identity and application. With that foundation, we proceeded to deliver go to work on a vision for the new airline.

The solution was delivered as a story, A visual and verbal expression of the new brand, with proof of concept applications along a customer journey of what it would be like to travel on the rebranded airline. Digital and tangible brand experiences were created to show how the brand would perform and express itself - From the initial thought of booking a trip to purchase. From boarding - to - in flight - to - arrival, we applied the strategy, voice and identity across all touch-points, even the interiors, and paint scheme of the airline livery, to what happens if we accidentily loose your luggage.

The CEO was not only impressed, but re-invigorated in this vision. He green-lighted the full scope, and we spent the next two years developing and rolling it out to the public, and had even more unexpected challenges as they merged with Virgin Atlantic.

See more about this process here at DesignAir.