Kingfisher: Will You Fly The "Good Times" By Paying More

Last Weekend when I went to M.G.Road , Bangalore to chill out ( the only work I am doing in Bangalore) I found something amazing, huge hoarding advertising, in the left side “indi-fferent” in blue background and the right side says “Different” in red background and this is followed by “Why fly low-cost carriers? Fly Kingfisher. I thought I have read it wrong as the auto rickshaw was in motion. Why a company would advertising in such a way. Who is the target audience? This position doesn’t cater to the mass market. And seeing the occupancy percentage of airliners these days they need more number of passengers to board. Are the hoarding indirectly advertising for low cost carriers (LCC)? But I was confirmed and stunt by looking the same hoarding elsewhere which reads…….left side “Go like a passenger” and the right “Fly like a guest” and followed by the same punch line why fly…..fly kingfisher. So I thought what the business of right and left and that to with different colour and followed with the same punch line.


Kingfisher want to communicate that what is written in left side that we experience in low cost carriers and the right one with red colour background is experienced when you travel with kingfisher.
It is said that the campaign is directed to degrade other airline that is Indigo. Why to talk about controversies let’s talk about the ideas that has been put.
After breaking my head for quite some time I got some idea why would they advertise in this fashion.
Actually due to current market scenario many travelers shifted themselves to low cost airlines, who before where flying on kingfisher. So to bring back those churn customers the company wanted to highlight this Point of Difference (PODs) when compared to LCCs and win back its consumer base.
And it is always true that every one want to wear branded, eat branded…….and fly branded.
It feels pleasure and upgraded too many when they say that they fly with kingfisher.
To take this advantage kingfisher had designed this strategy. And they want to target the executives and business travelers who have discontinued travelling with them due to bleak economy condition.
I agree with their strategy but if you see the other side of the coin the story may be totally different and it can go against the brand.
By this kind of positioning travelers may have a negative perception that kingfisher is overprized airlines or for premium segment. And this will harm the airline and passengers or rather I should say Guest in kingfisher words would discount themselves first itself that it is a costly airline. I can recall one more brand called “Tanishq” which for quite a sometime had to go with the same positioning problem and was perceived to be overpriced.
And if you ask someone the same question …his obvious answer would be the fare is less in the low cost airlines, simple.
And the truth of the current times tells us that people would save money rather than pay extra for the “Good times” unless otherwise you are totally and clearly superior.