American Airlines New Brand Positioning.

American Airlines unveiled a new brand campaign, marking an important milestone in the company’s market positioning. American’s first such initiative in more than a decade, the program includes a new tagline, “We know why you fly.”
The campaign is built around American’s nearly eight decades of flying passengers around the world, and the deep understanding that can only be gained from those years of service. Central to the brand program is American’s workforce of 80,000 professionals worldwide. The brand campaign also focuses on American’s historic strengths — including important attributes such as its global network, which every day flies more than 200,000 people to 250 cities in more than 40 countries with nearly 3,800 daily flights*; AAdvantage Travel Awards program, the world’s first and most popular frequent-flyer program; and American’s luxurious First-Class cabin accommodations.

“With much of the airline industry in chaos, this is an opportunity for us to reinforce what our brand stands for in the marketplace and to strengthen our long-term relationship with customers,” said Dan Garton, Executive Vice President-Marketing for American Airlines. “For our customers, we know the flight is a means to an end. It’s not just a seat on a flight to a place — it’s a seat on a flight to an important moment in your life.”

The company’s new brand positioning will be supported by a comprehensive integrated, bilingual marketing program. The advertising program includes television, radio, print and online ads in both English and Spanish. The ads will appear nationally and in key local markets.

The ads, featuring both customers and employees, illustrate the important linkage between the knowledge American employees possess and how that knowledge aligns with the reasons people fly, whether to attend a last-minute meeting or make it home in time to celebrate an anniversary.

The marketing program also will feature a special Web site accessible through AA.com titled WhyYouFly.com. The site will establish a dialogue between American and its customers, inviting customers to send in stories, photos and video that illustrate why they fly. The site also will enable customers to view the program advertising, as well as learn more information about the features and functions of AA.com, such as online flight check-in, flight status notification and online reservations.

American’s Spanish-language ads initially will appear on local Spanish-language television stations and in newspapers in Boston, New York City, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.; on Univision nationally; on Spanish-language radio stations in key markets; and in a dozen national Spanish-language magazines, including People en Espanol, National Geographic, Hispanic and Hispanic Business.