Airspeed Aviation
Manifest planned and implemented the leading charter airline's repositioning, services restructuring, and rebranding, and designed and built two new websites, to help Airspeed Aviation fly high.
Since 2006 Airspeed Aviation has grown rapidly to become the largest air charter airline in the Hunter Valley, flying government, business and private passengers across Australia with a fleet of aircraft to match ever customer need. Its Flight School business had also grown from a single site to four full-time training centres across New South Wales.
In response to changing customer needs and a more crowded competitor landscape, the CEO of Airspeed Aviation engaged Manifest to help deliver his vision for change and growth.
The challenge
Despite rapid growth and a healthy market share of private air charter in NSW, the CEO of Airspeed Aviation had identified important shifts in customer demand, in part due to the Covid pandemic but predominantly caused by economic factors affecting the country's mining industry
Manifest was asked to refresh the proposition and overhaul the branding. Our observation was that most private charter airlines look and sound the same, competing on price but less successfully on service. We created a research programme to identify what makes Airspeed Aviation different form the rest and how that difference translates into value and an enhanced experience for its clients.
Our bright thinking
• Vision and Values
• Qualitative research
• New brand strategy
• Internal workshops
• Services restructuring
• Strategic Consultancy
• Service design and alignment with brand
• Website design and build x 2
• Launch
Our internal and external research found that Airspeed Aviation was highly regarded and valued for its truly bespoke service and staff friendliness.
We used these findings to create a brand strategy and values built around the tagline of 'Taking care of you in the air'. From this we developed key messaging and a tone of voice that emphasises care and friendliness, with lines such as 'Flying Australia with a smile'.
In designing a new website, we identified three core charter customer segments (Corporate, Private and Scenic) and developed fresh and compelling propositions for each. We recommended separating the charter and flight school offerings and marketing them via two websites.
Our recommendation to create a more sustainable aviation business through carbon offsetting was immediately accepted by the client who had already been contemplating such a step. We also persuaded the client to pledge to become an early adopter of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) which can reduce carbon emissions directly by up to 85% in neat form.
Our inspired creativity
Airspeed Aviation was already an established and respected private charter airline but its branding and communications didn't reflect its achievements let alone its aspirations.
In creating a new visual identity for Airspeed Aviation we were asked to make it as evolutionary as possible and ideally to work with a classic red, blue and white palette.
To comply with this brief, we rejected softer forms that perhaps more naturally express care and friendliness (although this was already referenced in the tagline) and focused on projecting the speedy service and professionalism of the airline along with the sense of directionality innate to flying busy people around the country at short notice.
The new mark combines the simplified form of two As along with a strong sense of the urgency and purpose that characterise the airline’s services and customer needs.
