I love budget airlines for how they've made travel easy and accessible -- especially since we live on an archipelago, where it's next to impossible to get anywhere that's somewhere except by air. That's why AirAsia, Tiger Airways and Cebu Pacific were welcome alternatives to PAL's distinctive balance of ridiculously high fares and unmistakably crappy travel experiences.
Some weeks back, I noticed some small billboards along EDSA advertising a new airline: "ZestAir." How exciting! A new airline would mean a new travel option, and additional pressure on existing airlines to offer even more competitive rates, services, routes.
But when I visited the website (www.zestair.com.ph) hoping to find out what new travel adventures this new airline would open up, I was met by:
1. The knowledge that ZestAir is nothing more than a rebrand of Asian Spirit, now tagged as "Asia's Most Refreshing Airline."
2. Some of the crappiest copy in the world, attempting to explain the thinking behind the rebrand. See below.
3. A HUGE photo of their CEO. It's the first thing you see on their home page, even before the planes, their destinations, their promotions, or even their logo. How refreshing, right? And really now, you don't put your CEO's photo on your website's home page unless your CEO is Lance Gokongwei, Fred Uytengsu, or Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala.
Talking about my website visit with some officemates some days later, they asked, " 'ZestAir, Asia's most refreshing airline'... what the hell is that supposed to mean?" I replied, "Maybe it means the planes are open air. Like ordinary fare buses..."
Well, what a coincidence -- a few weeks later, I found out that I was booked on Asian Spirit / ZestAir for our upcoming Boracay office offsite (i.e., company junket). I was mildly curious about what the changes would be.
Here's where the fun started. Along with a handful of others, my Manila - Caticlan flight was supposed to be at 12:30 PM on Wednesday. Hooray, that meant I had a whole afternoon to enjoy the island.
But on Tuesday evening, I got an e-mail saying that the flight had been moved to 3 PM on Friday. Crap, goodbye to the happy afternoon plans.
So I'm in the office on Wednesday morning, taking my time getting work done, since I don't have to be at the airport until 2 PM.
And then, at 12:50 PM, while having a pleasant lunch with officemates, I get a call from Tani, who's on the same flight as me -- "Chad and I are already at the airport, and we just found out our flight has been moved earlier to 2 PM. You have to get here by 1:15 PM otherwise you'll have to take the 3:30 PM... to Kalibo."
WTF, right!? And the nerve of them to not even call us, but rather, leave it to kind colleagues to call us to inform us of the change!? Diva that I am, I said to Tani, "NO, I won't be there at 1:15 PM, duh." And so Falqi, Anj, and I -- the ones who didn't make it by 1:15 PM to catch the Asian Spirit / ZestAir flight -- got tickets on PAL Express instead.
Lucky for me, I was still going to fly Asian Spirit / ZestAir going back to Manila on Saturday. And I learned Asian Spirit's / ZestAir's efforts to educate the public about the re-brand were more aggressive in Boracay. When the girl at the resort's front desk called the Asian Spirit ticket office, she said, "Hello, Asian Spirit? Oh, I'm sorry, yes, ZestAir." Then, when I had to have my ticket stamped for a schedule change, I had trouble finding the ticket office at D'Mall because the once-big Asian Spirit sign above their door had now been changed with a little bond-paper-sized sign, "ZestAir." And at the Caticlan airport, a big ZestAir banner was hanging over the check-in counter (with a little parenthetical remark of an "Asian Spirit" banner hanging below it); the baggage trucks had "ZestAir" stickers; and green and orange flags fluttered along the path to the ZestAir pre-departure lounge beside the terminal.
But the plane was my favorite part. It was still an ancient, zero-maintenance-budget propeller planes -- yes, one of those of those which won them the reputation, "You take off as an Asian and you land as a spirit" -- complete with rusty surfaces, unlaundered seat covers, dripping air conditioning vents, joints that threaten to come off at any minute. The only difference was that the whole plane's exterior was painted white -- naturally, to make way for the orange and green paint that would herald that it was now "ZestAir."
Anyway, our flight landed in Manila half an hour late. Incidentally, the same evening I landed, I found out from Tatay that Tita Inday flew back to Boracay that same day via Asian Spirit / ZestAir -- and found out at the last minute that her flight was rerouted to Kalibo. At least they're consistent, right?
If there's anything worthwhile that came out of this whole experience, it's the amazement that a re-brand could actually be executed so crappily. You don't rebrand unless you have a significant change in consumer experience behind it -- otherwise it's just superficial and disappointing. You don't execute a rebrand until you're ready to rebrand everything -- or else, the piecemeal implementation just falls flat in its early stages. And if you're going to talk about yourself being a "Asia's most refreshing", you'd better make sure people know why -- and it's not about some poorly written copy in a message from a CEO who doesn't look refreshing at all.
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