Vueling began life as an idea, conceived jointly by Saffron and the airline’s founders, for the first budget airline that would compete nationally in Spain and Southern Europe from a hub in Barcelona. Low cost airlines have a nasty reputation—no assigned seat, no newspaper, no goodies, poor service, old planes and young pilots. We helped to turn these perceptions on their head.
Cheap flights don’t have to mean lower standards. We delivered a name which is unexpected, interesting and plays with Spanish and English by combining ‘vuel’ ‘to fly’ with ‘ing’ from ‘flying’. The kind of people who say Vueling, youngish, smart, clever and worldly are Vueling’s natural customer base. And then we helped deliver the experience—direct, simple, unexpected, down to earth, low prices, great service. It’s called ‘espiritu vueling’—‘doing things the vueling way’.
Vueling is not just about low price, it’s about being down to earth and one step ahead. All transactions online as easy as 1, 2, 3. Flying from major rather than secondary airports. New planes not old. Straightforward and fast forward—in communication, customer interface and service.
Straightforward and fast forward inspired an expression that’s fresh, contemporary, cosmopolitan, confident and cool. We engineered a cultural shift from formal to informal by using ‘tu’ not ‘usted’ in the tone of voice.
Vueling’s name meant we could own the dot com which was vital for a service that sells mostly online. The graphic dot signifies connecting people to places via online booking.
We created the name and an entire identity, not just visual and verbal but also behavioural—from nose to tail, from staff/customer contact to online interface.Saffron’s fingerprints are on everything from the business card to the jet engines to the selection of the in-flight entertainment.
We lead and influence many internal training sessions to promote the Vueling way of doing things. We sit on Vueling’s brand committee and take part in monthly sessions to advise on branding issues.
At launch, Vueling achieved the highest capitalisation ever achieved by a new airline in Europe. It reached its full year revenue target of €21 million within the first six months. At nine months one million tickets had been sold—the year’s target had been just 520,000. It’s now the second publicly quoted airline in Spain and after three years’ operations at the close of 2006, had a market value of €489 million. Highly rated by passengers, it continues to expand.
