Gaurav's Blog

Christening Tata-SQ’s new airline venture

This morning, it was interesting to read a news article on Tata-Singapore Airlines seeking a catchy brand name for its new airline venture in India.

When David Neelman, the serial airline entrepreneur was starting off his new airline venture in Brazil, he decided to come up with a competition, open to public, for finding a new name for it. The idea seems to have worked quite well as the Airline was name Azul Brazilian Airline- Azul in Portuguese is Blue. It’s crisp and short, easy to remember and pronounce. Besides, it naturally defined the colour scheme for the new airline making the job for the branding team probably much easier.

So what could be a good name for Tata-SIA’s new Airline?  I am not sure if ‘catchy’ is an interpretation that came from the MINT journalist who wrote the story or if it is really the intent of the airline management- it is not unusual for full service airlines to go for a ‘catchy’ name for its low cost subsidiaries – Jazz, Rouge & Scoot are some examples. But full service airlines typically stick to the more orthodox names. The other adjective used in the news story is-‘freshness’ that is somewhat more helpful in guessing the objective of finding a neutral name that does not include either Tata or Singapore Airline in it.

I pondered on a number of names for a while, keeping in the mind the imagery they may convey. These included Lotus Air, Air Singha, Basil Air, Air Chakra or even Ginger but I gave up on all of them. Lotus is too closely associated with a political party. Singha is a Singaporean beer brand. Ginger too, is an existing low cost hotel brand owned by Tatas themselves. Basil as a name, although isn’t pre-existing to the best of my knowledge, does sound a bit bland and its imagery would be difficult to portray distinctively on an airline livery. Chakra on the hand is great on an aircraft tail and it’s highly symbolic as it appears on the Indian flag but the sound of the name does not quite do it for me.

Then, I started to look at Airline liveries across the world and a couple of them appealed to me quite a bit- Air Canada’s Maple leaf logo – very distinct, very identifiable and easily portrayed across all the brand touch points. It is also a national symbol for Canada.

Similarly, Air New Zealand’s fern- visually so appealing and rooted in symbolism as it is a Māori symbol for new life.

Maple leaf logo

Air New Zealand’s unfolding fern

Aer Lingus’ Irish Shamrock

This set me thinking about the uniquely Indian botanical symbols and what could be more uniquely Indian than the Pīpal tree and it’s uniquely shaped conical leaf. Infact, it is so deeply rooted in Indian religion and so steeped in mythology that its binomial name is Ficus Religiosa or the ‘sacred Fig’.

Buddha attained enlightenment meditating under this tree. It is also well known that its leaves were used for writing upon, so the bond with it is well established and the symbolism is unmistakable.    

An image of a Pīpal leaf

There were atleast 2 other great reasons why it appealed to me:

First, companies like to use primary colours on their brand names and/or logos. Green is a primary colour. It goes very well with the idea of ‘Freshness’ (Pīpal is well established as an excellent supplier of oxygen which again fortifies the idea of freshness). Above all, Green, as a airline brand colour isn’t taken yet. (Jet Airways uses blue & yellow; Air India uses red; Kingfisher used a particularly aggressive hue of red too; Spicejet uses orange, Indigo uses..well..indigo as in colour indigo and so on. Green is a primary colour and a good hue of green can look quite attractive & distinct visually although it may not be very useful at other places such as on staff uniforms. But like Jet, these could follow a different color with probably a scarf or tie in green.

Second, I felt, Pīpal sounds exactly like People, so there is a nice ring to it. And there is a derived or perceptual meaning lent to the brand name even for those who may not know the deeper symbolic meaning. 

My money therefore would be on Pīpal or Peepal Air. J

(Yes, I know People’s Express and yes I know it failed but this is about the only downside I see. Besides there is a group of people who want to revive it with the same name).