When should airlines advertise?

All Indian domestic airlines have little or large advertising budgets. The Kingfisher - Deccan combine features on billboards outside airports, glossy magazines and broadsheets. Spicejet does not feature at all large scale advertising but appears sometimes in portals with partnerships with the airline . Spicejet is reportedly with the most stringent cost structure in India and the most successful airline financially.
Go Air does not advertise and does not feature in the top three as far as choice or aspiration of the average passenger (individual or corporate) goes.
Indian Airlines is in the same boat as it was before all these private airlines came in. It still remains the choice of official travel by bureaucracy babus but is not grabbed by the corporate traveller.
Jet Airways never advertised in travel trade magazines and also mainstream newspapers.
Air India and Indian Airlines advertised in magazines whose editors and proprietors knew the advertising moguls in the state owned airlines. Otherwise, to fulfill the annual presence, they used to fit into a left side corner of page seven in a colour format.
Then came competition. The rules of advertising changed overnight. Sadly, airlines have still not found the right mix.
Advertising is indulged in not to flex the marketing muscle and to announce to the world that you are a corporation to reckon with; advertising creates brand recall and sometimes allows you to save on other costs. Coca-Cola is associated with a youthful and party culture and is supposed to be the real thing as against Pepsi’s ‘arch rival’ tag. However, Sprite gets away with the tagline ‘Sprite bujhaye pyaas, baki sub bakwas.’
Similarly,, before the Deccan -Kingfisher merger , Deccan used to advertise actively on only one plank - that of being a low cost carrier. Now government taxes have gone up and cost of airlines have gone up consistently. Time will tell whether they take to advertising in a big way when the downturn happens or continue to languish and wait for the time to fold up operations and sell off assets.
31/08/08 Debasish Roy/Economic Times

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Categories: Indian Aviation- In General Aug 2008