AirAsiaCopied

When the pandemic grounded more than 90 per cent of AirAsia's fleet, founder and group chief executive Tony Fernandes looked for other revenue. On 8 October 2020 the group revealed airasia.com as a super app, offering more than 15 products and services under three pillars, travel, e-commerce and fintech, from flights and hotels to food delivery, groceries and its BigPay payments. Fernandes said the company had not wasted the crisis, using lockdown to fine-tune the platform and simplify checkout.

72andSunny Singapore created the new logo and visual identity, Campaign Brief Asia and The Hard Copy reported, while the tagline and communications style were developed by AirAsia's internal brand and creative division. Chief brand officer Rudy Khaw said the identity kept the core of what made AirAsia loved but propelled it into a new age. The logo was meant to be contemporary, simple and digital, embodying simplicity, inclusiveness and accessibility. The tagline went from 'Now everyone can fly' to 'for everyone', showing the company was no longer just an airline.

The launch came with the first airasia.com Super Sale, replacing the famous Free Seats promotions, with discounts of up to 90 per cent. Marketing-Interactive found services such as a grocery section and 'Get Holla', paid shout-outs from artists on AirAsia's record label.

The Hard Copy called the new tagline somewhat ambiguous and noted the challenge of taking on Grab and Gojek, comparing the plan to Virgin stretching one brand across many businesses. Commenters on Campaign Brief Asia said the work was hard to tell apart from 72andSunny's other Southeast Asian app brands.

Marketing-Interactive's own check of the app found how far the pivot reached: alongside flights, hotels and insurance sat groceries through AirAsia fresh and Get Holla, which let users pay for shout outs from artists signed to its RedRecords label. An executive defined a super app as the place where commerce meets community, pointing to a network of over 400 routes and an in-app chat for passengers on the same flight. An identity built to hold paid celebrity greetings and fresh vegetables cannot look like an airline, which explains why it barely tries.

They had a point. The old logo had attitude; the new one is a lowercase app wordmark that could belong to any startup. 'For everyone' is generous to the point of saying nothing. The strategy was bold; the identity played safe.