Virgin Australia completes aircraft livery
With aircraft livery, airport signage and digital touchpoints to consider, the implementation of a new airline brand can be a big task.
When Virgin Blue completed its implementation of the new Virgin Australia brand, the airline created an online video that shows the aircraft livery painting in progress.
The creative video gives an idea of the scale of the project, it says how the repainting process takes 1,200 man hours and 11 days per aircraft. The job was done by Australian company, Flying Colours Aviation.
The Virgin Australia brand, created by Hulsbosch branding agency, was first launched in 2011. The video marks the painting of the final aircraft in the Virgin Australia fleet, it demonstrates the time it takes to implement a rebrand of this scale.
Marc Cloosterman, CEO at VIM Group, a brand implementation agency, explains why the rebranding of an entire fleet is a complex and incredibly costly process. Taking an aircraft out of service for the duration of the livery replacement is expensive in itself and the painting of a single Boeing 737 can cost up to 100,000 euros.
Cloosterman says, “It is understandable as to why an airline may choose to select a more natural process of replacement for the repainting of aircraft. An evolutionary rebranding process may result in a time span of several years to complete the rebranding of a whole fleet of aircraft. There is no urgent need for an airline to attempt a faster rebranding process that the evolutionary one. Providing that the initial launch of the rebranding is accompanied by strong sets of brand films and other collateral materials that demonstrate effective imagery of a sample of the fleet featuring new livery, the new brand will still be strongly communicated to the external viewer.”
When Virgin Australia was first rebranded in 2011, it immediately saw positive results, including an 81% growth in corporate and government revenues, a key business objective when Hulsbosch was first briefed.
