Eshin Direct

I almost pissed myself with laughter at the new United Airlines positioning when I saw it up close and personal in the Airport Express station today. For those with your head in the sand, or who don’t really care, United had this wonderfully US-centric positioning – “United – United We Stand” – which highlighted firstly their patriotism and fearful unity in the post-911 landscape.

What did I see at the Airport Express?

Headline – Have America at Your Feet.
By line – Something something x amount of US destinations etc, etc, etc.

New positioning? “United – It’s Time to Fly”

Being non-faecetious about it, I’d say some clever marketing dude at United figured that their old nationalistic positioning was perhaps too in your face for an international audience. Have a America at your feet. It’s a catchy headline. Although I’m not quite sure whether it was really intended to mean having America at your feet in terms of subservience… it’s more having America available to you. Perhaps the double meaning wasn’t intended but it’s certainly an attention grabber for a world that perhaps has grow tired of US paranoia about the “war on terror”.

And while “United We Stand” was perhaps ever so appropriate after United lost its planes in 911 (“Let’s Roll” would have been exploitative and also would have been too close to Chevrolet’s “Keeping America Rolling”), “It’s time to fly” is equally appropriate for the US in Iraq.