What's in a name (other than decades of legacy and heritage and connection)?

Air France-KLM group considers a generic new moniker

One of the absolute highlights of our brief professional sojourn in Europe was getting the chance to moderate brainstorming sessions with the marketing teams at both Air France and KLM when they were only a couple of years into their professional marriage. To say it was a culture clash would be an understatement, and it took every bit of recall from AP European History to handle it. While the team at Air France embraced ideation with a certain (and expected) je ne sais quoi, the team at KLM always wanted to move straight to solutions, and they had no qualms with letting us know it.¹ While there was an expectation that the two airlines would work more closely in terms of product offering and service, everyone in the room knew that was going to be a hard slog.

So, when the news broke last week that executives at Air France-KLM were considering a new name for their company, we were instantly reminded of those sessions (and the inherent tension therein).² Air France and KLM already made for strange bedfellows, and now leadership is looking to bring SAS and potentially TAP into the fold. We get that “Air France KLM SAS TAP Group” or something in that vein doesn’t roll off the tongue, but neither does the working name of “Blue Group.”

Now, wait a second, Al, aren’t they just changing the name of the parent company? Didn’t leadership say that a name change was “perfectly logical?” Who cares what some anonymous corporate entity above the flag carriers is called?

Well, you may not, but trust us, the people who work at these airlines do!

We all know couples where we always wonder how they really get along. (Photo by David Syphers on Unsplash)

Why is that, you say? Well, flag carriers have the added weight of representing their country, and that comes with a lot of pride amongst the employee group.³ And, even during times of economic uncertainty and struggling performance, no one wants to see their name taken away.

Now Air France-KLM has a couple of nearby examples in Europe. The first is the Lufthansa Group, which includes its namesake along with Austrian, SWISS, Brussels, ITA and several leisure carriers. In this case, Lufthansa went ahead and said, “We are the biggest entity, and our parent name will reflect that.”⁴ While each flag carrier still has its name and identity, it’s pretty clear who is in charge.

The other example is the International Airlines Group (IAG), which includes British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Vueling and LEVEL. Now, this is clearly the model that the AF/KLM folks are looking at. IAG is probably the most generic name you could come up with short of something like Airline Company, Inc. While the intentions were undoubtedly to create a “neutral” company that could encompass multiple flag carriers, the IAG name would definitely scare me more if I was a proud Aer Lingus or Iberia employee. At some point, it wouldn’t be a stretch to see that name take over the individual carriers as well in an attempt at “synergy” — they’ve already done it in cargo.

Nothing gets an executive more fired up than this kind of tail line-up shot — though we’re pretty sure this was photoshopped. (Photo Credit: IAG)

So what to do for AF/KLM? We’d put all our money on a name that isn’t too far off from (or exactly like) the aforementioned “Blue Group.”⁵ There is too much corporate logic to fight against it. Decks⁶ will be circulated about how the holding company needs to be a “neutral arbiter” and represent everyone. But the truth of holding companies is usually a bit more blunt. “Neutral arbiter” can often transform into distant leadership making entirely spreadsheet-driven decisions that are then foisted upon frontline management with little to no buy-in.⁷ And eventually, a new deck might be generated saying how synergy should now be extended to the side of the plane — and the whole airline should be called Blue Group. (Don’t worry, operating carrier, we’ll put your original logo by the door or something.)

Whatever happens, we can promise you that the employees will always view themselves as Air France flight attendants or KLM pilots or SAS gate agents. We know plenty of people in the US that still view themselves as Northwest, Continental or even TWA(!) crew members.⁸ No amount of corporate restructuring or branding can change that.

Notes

1. To this day, the greatest out-of-office email we have ever received came from a client at KLM: “I am on holiday until August 13th. Your email will not be read.”

2. Any tension was ameliorated by a long lunch in the Air France training center cafeteria, which blew away any cafeteria (or overall eating venue) we’d ever experienced

3. We can (and should) have another longer discussion about the nature of flag carriers and the differing levels of employee pride therein — we know a few of you chuckled knowing that some flag carriers are more punching bag than national symbol

4. This quote is entirely made up but also probably pretty close to what happened

5. Having spent years in branding, trust us, there are logo mock-ups out there already

6. For our readers who (luckily) lack a corporate background, deck is another word for a PowerPoint presentation — decks are almost always bad — unfortunately we know because we have written many of them

7. We may have worked under a holding company model for almost twenty years, but again, who can say?

8. Look closely next time you fly and you can often spot a pin or other relic from a crew member’s former employer