Every brand—an airline or any other—has its own specific needs. The most successful, and most visible, however, are not simply those that develop a cohesive identity system. They must also effectively tell a story that customers want to be part of.
As a result of its system-wide branding overhaul, SAS went from a period of steady loss in 2014 to a profit of 148 million euros in 2015, with a 26% rise in perceived brand value. What’s more, the updated gradient-based identity brought a four-fold increase in the return on media investment.
CREATED WITH:
Find out more about Bold at www.boldscandinavia.com
Collaborators:
Amanda Andersson, Erik Wåhlström, Pekka Stålnacke, Franklyn, John Jacobson, JVD, Evidence, Åkestam Holst, Å.H Promenad, Å.H Studion, &Co, Anorak, Factory, Familjen Pangea, AGO, C2, Linjepunkt, Ted Bernhadtz, Bildinstituet, Söderberg Agentur
Account Managers:
Anette Hildebrandt, Emma Andersson Glaas, Lisa Kårfalk, Maja Wetterberg, Amanda Liljenäs
Planners:
Patrik Karlsson, Fred Ellison
Account Directors:
Lina Drott Hernmarck, Adrian Nilsson
Senior Designers:
Gaioo Phunwut, Sofia Ekvall
Designers:
Oscar Söderberg, Lina Sponberg, Anna Turdell
Creative Director:
Oskar Lübeck
Design Directors:
Fredrika Doré, Marcus Gärde
The Story Behind the Rebrand of
Scandinavian Airlines
A STORY ROOTED IN THE SKY
AN IDENTITY ROOTED IN STORY
The feeling we wanted to create
was freedom — something very airy.
AIRLINE
AN
BRAND
TO
HOW
In 2014, Scandinavian Airlines was struggling. The company was adjusting to new air travel habits, trying to cater to the needs of younger budget travelers, and making strides to fix operational flaws. Its reputation and brand were suffering, and it was buckling under the pressure. In need of a fresh new look for the company, the airline brought in the Stockholm-based creative agency Bold to give the brand a facelift that would appeal to the modern traveler.
To overhaul and redesign an airline brand proved to be a dream project for Bold. It also presented a significant challenge: to tell a new visual story for the brand and, at the same time, preserve the company’s heritage.
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“Our brief was to provide a more coherent and premium Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) expression that would create a sense of community for the SAS customers,” explains Bold’s Fredrika Doré, the agency’s Design Director, who oversaw the rebrand. “In the nineties, they had quite a nice redesign of the brand, which was very Scandinavian in a classic way. It was minimalistic – very strict and very clean, no colors, and not so warm. I think that worked well at the time, but things have changed a lot. Brands today have to be more focused on digital channels, which ultimately means that you must have more flexibility. A brand's visual identity also has to be incredibly strong in order to stand out in today's world—where everything seems to demand audience attention."
After setting the direction with an updated logotype, the next step was to establish a new visual identity system—one that followed the trajectory of the ‘True Traveler’ experience.
“When you fly between Stockholm and New York, you travel through the dusk or the dawn, and you see the sun rising or falling, and you see this gradient from the window,” explains Doré. “For me, that’s kind of the core of the joy of traveling, because you feel so free. It’s that kind of freedom, and it’s so organically premium, it’s like magic. That’s the logic and story we were after.”
“Ultimately, we were trying to build a new type of travel experience—based on a particular traveler personality, and also strongly reflecting the premium aspects of the SAS brand.”
Doré and her team started with the most recognizable part of the SAS brand: the company’s logotype. The simple step of removing the bounding box from the existing logo effectively gave it a stronger sense of airiness, and more versatility across various touch points as the project continued.
Doré and her team of designers kicked off the project with a strategic focus group session. They turned their attention to SAS’s most frequent travelers and most loyal followers of the SAS brand—those who fly with the airline at least five times per year. ‘The True Travelers,’ as they came to be known, represented 12% of the total market but accounted for an impressive 70% of the company’s overall revenue. The needs of this target group became the base on which the designers built their strategy for a redefined SAS identity.
AN IDENTITY ROOTED IN STORY
click any image to enlarge
To give expression to the story, the design team turned to photographer Erik Wåhlström. He captured the sky gradients as dusk fell, and dawn broke over Scandinavia. The resulting analog photographs provided the color scheme that defined the rest of the branded system—across all touchpoints, from digital properties and advertisements to menu cards, cabin crew uniforms, the in-flight entertainment schedule, and even the livery that celebrated the brand’s 70th anniversary.
“Traveling can often be hectic. We have to go through security, and haul our heavy bags; it’s all a bit stressful, and boring, even. But the other part of the traveler’s story is viewing earth from above. It's dreamy in a way—like there is no limitation on what might happen next,” says Doré. “It took a lot of mood boards to build out the system, but once we had the direction and the core concept in place, it was easy to work out the rest of the applications.”
“If there is one takeaway from this project that I can pass down to another designer, it would be to 'go bold' from the very beginning," adds Doré. "Even if you don’t think you—or even your client—are capable of doing something, send them the message that you can.”