Kingfish-err ???

After taking its then arch-rival Jet Airways head on in 2007 Kingfisher Airlines has now trained its guns on low cost carriers in general and IndiGo in particular. The new Kingfisher outdoor campaign takes a veiled dig at IndiGo.The second picture above has all the ads in this series launched till now.

In 2007, Jet Airways which underwent image makeover released an outdoor campaign stating "We have changed". In what could be termed as a "Cheeky" move Kingfisher placed a hoarding above that stating "We made them change" and managed to get away with lots of publicity.But as you all know back then Jet Airways was market leader in high end carriers or luxury class. So targeting Jet Airways through such campaigns was a great idea as Kingfisher has projected its brand image as a high end luxury carrier.

But will such comparison with a low cost carrier do good to the well-established brand image of  Kingfisher ?  In my opinion answer is 'No'. Because it's customer will think that Kingfisher is compromising its brand promise by competing with low cost carriers. I believe such campaigns will dilute it's brand image.

So how do you think IndiGo is taking all this? V Sunil, executive creative director, Wieden+Kennedy, the agency handling the IndiGo account, says they won’t be reacting to the new outdoor campaign. He adds, “I believe it is a big compliment for us if Kingfisher is making digs at the brand. IndiGo is flying to full capacity and if a full service carrier is taking the trouble to talk about us, it’s great.”(Source: www.campaignindia.in). Smart chap. He knows this campaign is going to bring lots of free publicity for IndiGo after all they are being compared with the no.1 private player in airline industry. 

But if he feels Indi-gnated enough and decides against taking it lying down then he can always try the copy written by me(the top picture in this post) to counter the four issued by Kingfisher. After all it seems everything is fair in love, war and advertising :).