Turkish Dismay!
by Chris Reed
the face of Turkish Airlines...or one of them anyway....
Whoever runs marketing for Turkish Airlines needs to read a book about focused marketing. Either that or they need to see a doctor as they are clearly schizophrenic.
Turkish Airlines (TA) is current aligning themselves with the new Cars 2 movie, currently being slated by people around the world for being even worse than the original. Quite why TA thinks a film about cars is a great brand partner escapes me, especially when they don’t travel to many of the places in Europe from America that the Cars 2 cars travel to in the film. I imagine that they were dazzled by the Disney Pixar brand and agreed to create a partnership with them without much strategic thought as to why.
Before aligning with Cars 2 they also used Kevin Costner as their brand ambassador – just more bizarre than words can describe! Where are the brand value synergies, why when most of your customers are in Europe would you use Hollywood star that has lost a lot of his credibility and star rating to be the face of your brand?
It does get worse though! You may have seen one of the cheesiest adverts of all time featuring the ubiquitous Manchester United team ( who sell their sponsorship rights to anyone with money regardless of brand fit) travelling in a TA plane. They are the official airline of Manchester United as they are of Barcelona. They have also taken a weird turn towards Basketball sponsoring teams in Greece, Spain and Turkey as well as Koybe Bryant….because there is such great synergy between Basketball in Greece and an Airline trying to fight with the big boys……!
Sport is obviously their thing as are currently using the women’s number one tennis player Caroline Wozniacki as the face of their Business and Comfort Class. Why not a Basketball player? Why not the lovely Wayne Rooney? Why no the lead car out of Cars 2?!
Read more: http://chrisreed.brandrepublic.com/2011/08/26/turkish-dismay/#ixzz1W5vXul8C