CREATING THE FUTURE FOR CLUB CLASS BA CLUB & 1ST CLASS BRAND REGENERATION
BREAKTHROUGH OPPORTUNITY
British Airways had to innovate – but lacked a structure or framework to do so
British Airways had been market leaders in Business Class flying. However, by 1991 its Transatlantic Club Service was under threat. Virgin Atlantic had started to operate on key destinations and two giant carriers, American Airlines and United Airlines had started to operate from Heathrow.
Breakthrough worked with Tim Shepherd-Smith, leading the global marketing policy, to review BA’s worldwide marketing approach. The Programme objectives were:
- Regenerate the Club Class Brand and restore its power for the future.
- Create a fresh Club Class vision that would be enthusiastically owned by BA and its agencies.
- Get the brand team to generate an innovative strategy that could guide the redesign of the product, transform the service and relaunch the brand through a new, winning campaign.
“It has changed the way we look and feel about our customers forever”
Sir Colin Marshall
Chairman and CEO
British Airways
BREAKTHROUGH APPROACH
The Leadership Team and Breakthrough designed a four-phase Programme, carried out over a 9-month period.
British Airways’ Breakthrough BIG TALK®, 100 Business Class customers generated new groundbreaking insights; including priceless consumer insights and creative outputs for marketing and promotion.
We brought elements of the Club Brand team together including advertising, promotional and design agencies. This provided a source of new thinking about business flying, the brand, the customer and the future.
The Breakthrough Intensive designed the strategy and execution for the future. It then implemented the strategy through a focused set of multi-functional team-based projects.
BREAKTHROUGH RESULTS
NEW VISION AND STRATEGY
In their BIG TALK® British Airways created the foundation that redesigned the future of World Club Class Travel with a powerful new vision for the Club Brand: customers didn’t want to work in the sky, they wanted a home away from home – BA strategy reflected this.
NEW, REDESIGNED PRODUCT
The product and offering were completely redesigned, from livery, through to menus and pricing. Eventually, this included an Arrivals Terminal as part of the Club service.
The revolutionary sleeper service was installed following the Programme: one of many First Class brand innovations that came out of their BIG TALK®.
NEW CAMPAIGN AND CUSTOMER SERVICE FOCUS
A new advertising campaign was generated and executed based on the customer insight from their BIG TALK®. A radical departure from previous marketing, the campaign emphasized the softer, caring qualities of flying BA rather than the harder “business warrior” approach.
BA re-trained all of its client-facing employees. The new training gave significant competitive advantage to the brand and airline, and shifted performance to a customer centric approach.