According to marketing magazine, the new Malaysia Airlines brand was launched with what they call ‘a new branding campaign’. Now personally I don’t think you can have a branding campaign. In my opinion that’s an oxymoron but let’s not go there for now.
Marketing magazine reported that a new hashtag #todayishere is the new tagline. A hashtag is the new tagline? Is that from MAB or is that an assumption? And besides, what does ‘todayishere’ mean? Does it mean we can simply forget about the past? And what about tomorrow? How does todayishere reassure me that it is safe for me to fly or put my kids on Malaysia Airlines?
And how is todayishere going to improve the experience of interacting with Malaysia Airlines? Does anyone know? How is anyone going to build a brand narrative around todayishere? Perhaps the agency Prophet from Hong Kong can share with us the next stage of their rebrand strategy because I want to know if there is anything else to come?
Are the crew going to be trained to represent this ‘new brand?’ What improvements have been made to the key touchpoints of the brand? How will a first time user be engaged at the booking engine? Has the broken booking engine been fixed? If not, why bother with a new hashtag/tagline/rebrand launch? Why not wait till that key component of the experience is at least working properly?
Although I don’t consider ‘todayishere’ to be a tagline, it is borderline criminal to believe you can rebrand any organisation with a tagline. Just ask the Malaysian government. Almost 2 years ago to the day, they tried to launch the Malaysia nation brand with a tagline.
But you can’t retrofit a brand around a tagline. Branding is about delivering value, at every touchpoint and at everytime and on the customers terms. It’s actually very easy, provided you start from the right place, the organisation because the organisation is the brand. Not a tagline, not a hashtag, not an ad campaign, not a campaign, not a new logo. Please, someone pass the message to the Malaysia Airlines board.
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