Settle in, relax, keep the real hustle hidden.
Fractional brand leadership for a disruptive luxury private airline who, like their most demanding customers, had high expectations and no time to spare as they took flight into new markets.
Project Services
- Strategy
- Branding
- Packaging
- Art Direction
Aero
- Enrico Costantini
- Gabriel Lindsay
- Ingmar Swalue
- Karl Hab
- Kate Holstein
- TribeX
- Yannis Henlenson
A true luxury airline experience means so much more than elegant leather and good wine in the business class seats. Aero brings Silicon Valley nimbleness to a customer base that expects tranquility, timelessness, and attention to every detail. Efficient business operations must feel bespoke. There’s hard work to be done, but for the guest, that work needs to get out of the way.
With the starting point of an existing graphic logo and type treatment, we worked for two years to build and implement a system informed by beautiful strategic work that could function, evolve, and delight across all aspects of service experience and physical touch.
Impact
Aero saw uptick in targeted customers and client segments, increasing sales the eu by 20% in one season.
Social media outreach with Otherness' new art direction created magnetic appeal, with top luxury holding groups seeking collaborations with aero.
Every moment is unique. Every moment is consistent.
The demands of the best brand guidelines are as adaptable as they are clear.
For those who aren’t already in the departure lounge, photography is one of Aero’s most powerful weapons to communicate their unique sense of luxury, ease, and optimism. But it’s not all about nice pictures of a plan — moments in the lounge, in the air, and at the destination all need a different mood, and a different sense of personality and play.
Through the development of a deep, thorough, 70-page set of imagery and photography guidelines to live at the heart of the brand system, designed to live and adapt through real use, we ensured that imagery could lean away from stock travel clichés, and into something sensory, and joyful for some of the world’s best photographers to work with.
Over our two years of working alongside the Aero marketing team, we collaborated with a host of guest art directors, videographers and photographers, including Kate Holstein, Karl Hab, Yannis Henrion, and TribeX, all of whom had our core system as their starting point.
“Otherness’ work on the photo guidelines marked a point where the Aero’s elevated look came together as a holistic experience with the brand strategy. The striking visuals not only captured the essence of luxury but also resonated remarkably well with our discerning customers. The look significantly contributed to our success in highly competitive hospitality and aviation spaces, creating a sensibility that was instantly seen as Aero. Our refined look helped us open new doors to brand collaborations, influencers, partners and guests.”
Shem Jacobs, VP of Brand, Europe, Aero
Boarding can be beautiful, we swear.
A well-designed boarding pass needs to perform multiple functions. Working closely for six months, with ground crew and others who would need to actually use them, we created a unique, discreet, and tactile object that preserved passenger anonymity while remaining functionally useful at a glance and from a distance. These beautiful destination-driven passes are collectible, seasonal, and changeable, with an extremely low per-unit production cost.
In the airline business, even the most demanding passenger will sometimes need a pass they can scribble on.
It’s about who your friends are.
An intense commitment to guest experience led to a unique collaboration with Dr Sturm, the leading German skincare brand. Guests were offered a refreshment kit to glow up while enroute.
The Dr Sturm collaboration provided a model for ongoing brand collaborations in which both sides brought equal amounts of elevated luxury, care, and trusted treatment, easing effortlessly into our broader brand system while remaining true to their own essence.
Harmony is key.
Over two years of working with Aero, Otherness touched every aspect of the business, from conceptualizing guest experience moments, through documenting the philosophy of design, and down to the pilot wings and host pins.
