The merger of two airlines has produced at least one clear beneficiary, and it is not a frequent flier.
Colle McVoy, the Minneapolis agency that has been part of the Stagwell holding company's portfolio, has been named to handle brand strategy for Allegiant, the Las Vegas-based carrier that recently completed its acquisition of Sun Country Airlines.
The assignment marks Colle McVoy's first airline client, a category that has historically been known for producing either long-tenured agency relationships or spectacularly brief ones. (The middle ground, apparently, does not exist at 30,000 feet.)
Allegiant's purchase of Sun Country, which had operated out of Minneapolis for more than four decades, created the kind of brand integration challenge that keeps strategists occupied for months. The agency's responsibilities will include brand identity development, employee and customer engagement, and go-to-market planning — the full menu of services that a newly combined carrier requires when it is trying to persuade two sets of customers that they are now, in fact, one happy family.
There is a certain geographic neatness to the arrangement. Sun Country was a Minneapolis institution; Colle McVoy is a Minneapolis agency. Whether that local connection played a role in the selection, or whether it is merely a coincidence that will be cited in future case studies, remains between the parties involved.
For Colle McVoy, the win represents an expansion into a category where the creative opportunities are considerable and the operational realities are, to put it gently, complicated. Airlines sell a commodity — transportation from one place to another — and must persuade travelers that the experience of buying that commodity from them will be somehow different.
The first campaigns have not yet been announced, which means the real work is just beginning.
Original story published in adweek.com: "Colle McVoy Lands Allegiant as Sun Country Merger Reshapes Its Brand"