Crashed again?
Management consultant Thomas Otte on the name for the new Swiss airline
Management consultant Thomas Otte on the name of the new Swiss airlineby Thomas Otte*The new Swiss airline will fly under the name Swiss. After months of excited guesswork, the secret of the new airline name was revealed last week. Management consultant Thomas Otte believes that the name's claim to be the sole representative of collective trust is dangerous.
Switzerland is loved because it is so beautifully Swiss. That's what we wrote just under six months ago. And brands are positive preconceptions. Switzerland is a gigantic positive preconception, which means that Switzerland is a very strong brand. One of the reasons why the former Swiss airline was so successful as a brand for so long was that it had largely aligned the content of the positive preconception of "Swissair", which it had created itself, with the preconception of good origins. In this respect, the clear content and stylistic
This reference to the collective trust context of "Switzerland" is of course correct in terms of brand strategy.
But that's all the positive aspects of the new "name". However, at least three reasons form an incalculable mortgage for the future. They will all have been considered and rejected with a straight face.
A brand without a product is like soap without water
"Have you heard of the new Swiss?" - "Swiss what then? I know a thousand different Swiss XY. Swiss cheese, Swiss chocolate, Swiss banking...?" And how does it sound when someone tells us: "I fly German." - "No, oh no, flying French will do the trick."
We don't necessarily want to remind you of the good old brand triad - brand, product and key wording - but successful brand management tolerates very little creative experimentation, especially when it comes to life-threatening things. The high performance standards proclaimed by the decision-makers are not compatible with the cheeky négligeance of the product: the public is definitely more in need of trust.
A brand with an exclusive right of representation
With the five national letters, the new airline clearly and unambiguously proclaims a claim to exclusive representation that could not be more comprehensive. This claim to exclusive representation refers to the whole of Switzerland and all its parts, as there is no customary restriction to one product or service.
The chronicler - another foreigner who persistently holds Switzerland in very high esteem - asks himself: How do the voters feel, how do the proto-Swiss feel, how do the national institutions feel, when a commercial enterprise - thanks exclusively to generous help from private and taxpayers, i.e. private hands again - suddenly takes it upon itself to represent its warm-hearted patrons on the international stage? How can this be reconciled with the new modesty declared from the top?
Until Halifax, it was only conceivable as a theoretical case that a Swiss plane would crash at all. Nevertheless, Halifax was probably still an exogenous accident. However, if you consider a brand to be a living system - and you should - then the other two were at least partly endogenous accidents, i.e. partly caused by the "brand" system itself: Vital subsystems made fatal mistakes under years of nerve-wracking tension.
Swiss XY - go along, get along
Unfortunately, such horror events cannot be ruled out for the future, even if it is only due to genuine third-party negligence. The headline will read: "Swiss crashes - 35 dead again." As the brand has no product but claims to be the sole representative for the whole of Switzerland, such an event has a direct and unshakable impact on the collective international trust of the whole of Switzerland. The media's customary desire to make things short will then repeatedly ask Switzerland as a whole: "Switzerland crashed?"
* Thomas Otte is the owner of Dr. Otte Brand Consulting/ Zurich.
Switzerland is loved because it is so beautifully Swiss. That's what we wrote just under six months ago. And brands are positive preconceptions. Switzerland is a gigantic positive preconception, which means that Switzerland is a very strong brand. One of the reasons why the former Swiss airline was so successful as a brand for so long was that it had largely aligned the content of the positive preconception of "Swissair", which it had created itself, with the preconception of good origins. In this respect, the clear content and stylistic
This reference to the collective trust context of "Switzerland" is of course correct in terms of brand strategy.
But that's all the positive aspects of the new "name". However, at least three reasons form an incalculable mortgage for the future. They will all have been considered and rejected with a straight face.
A brand without a product is like soap without water
"Have you heard of the new Swiss?" - "Swiss what then? I know a thousand different Swiss XY. Swiss cheese, Swiss chocolate, Swiss banking...?" And how does it sound when someone tells us: "I fly German." - "No, oh no, flying French will do the trick."
We don't necessarily want to remind you of the good old brand triad - brand, product and key wording - but successful brand management tolerates very little creative experimentation, especially when it comes to life-threatening things. The high performance standards proclaimed by the decision-makers are not compatible with the cheeky négligeance of the product: the public is definitely more in need of trust.
A brand with an exclusive right of representation
With the five national letters, the new airline clearly and unambiguously proclaims a claim to exclusive representation that could not be more comprehensive. This claim to exclusive representation refers to the whole of Switzerland and all its parts, as there is no customary restriction to one product or service.
The chronicler - another foreigner who persistently holds Switzerland in very high esteem - asks himself: How do the voters feel, how do the proto-Swiss feel, how do the national institutions feel, when a commercial enterprise - thanks exclusively to generous help from private and taxpayers, i.e. private hands again - suddenly takes it upon itself to represent its warm-hearted patrons on the international stage? How can this be reconciled with the new modesty declared from the top?
Until Halifax, it was only conceivable as a theoretical case that a Swiss plane would crash at all. Nevertheless, Halifax was probably still an exogenous accident. However, if you consider a brand to be a living system - and you should - then the other two were at least partly endogenous accidents, i.e. partly caused by the "brand" system itself: Vital subsystems made fatal mistakes under years of nerve-wracking tension.
Swiss XY - go along, get along
Unfortunately, such horror events cannot be ruled out for the future, even if it is only due to genuine third-party negligence. The headline will read: "Swiss crashes - 35 dead again." As the brand has no product but claims to be the sole representative for the whole of Switzerland, such an event has a direct and unshakable impact on the collective international trust of the whole of Switzerland. The media's customary desire to make things short will then repeatedly ask Switzerland as a whole: "Switzerland crashed?"
* Thomas Otte is the owner of Dr. Otte Brand Consulting/ Zurich.
