AVGEEK
What makes airline marketing a distinct discipline
Shashank Nigam examines how airlines, airports and aircraft manufacturers build their brands, with perspectives on Vistara’s brand, Air India’s rebrand and IndiGo’s marketing.
The conversation
As a historic week in the world of Indian aviation continues to rumble, the world’s foremost aviation marketing expert, Shashank Nigam, joins the show to talk about iconic brands of Indian aviation. We discussed the importance of airline marketing and how it differs from the usual marketing we all know.
How airline marketing evolved into health ratings during the pandemic, marketing’s importance for leading OEMs like Boeing, Airbus, Embraer, GE, and so forth. His unfiltered thoughts on Vistara’s brand dilution, Air India’s brand revamp, Indigo’s marketing, and how Indian airports are marketing themselves.
Shashank Nigam - @SimpliFlying
Vishal Mehra - @vishal1mehra
Key Takeaways
- Nigam’s 6X model treats expectations, passenger experience, external factors, communication, execution and distinctiveness as connected parts of an airline brand.
- Aviation manufacturers need to understand business customers and their decision journeys; passenger-facing airline advertising is a different task. The C Series case illustrates translating engineering and user benefits into a common brand idea for planners, staff, pilots and passengers, as Nigam recalls the campaign.
- Nigam frames health-safety ratings and sustainability consulting as successive responses to changing trust concerns, with sustainability communication needing action behind it.
- He credits Vistara with occupying a premium position and argues that a merger can preserve useful brand equity beyond visual cues.
- IndiGo’s strength, in Nigam’s assessment, is sustained consistency across brand expression and product naming.
- For Air India, Nigam sees trained people and reliable service as foundations of the brand while the physical product improves over time.
- Airport marketing should reflect different passenger needs; Nigam’s praise of Bengaluru’s new terminal is qualified by his having seen photographs rather than visited it.
Additional subjects
Editorial analysis
The brand promise has to survive disruption
Shashank Nigam explains why airline marketing begins with the experience passengers actually receive. Recalling the origins of SimpliFlying as an aviation-branding blog, he describes a move into consulting built around a distinction: passengers engage with airlines for much longer than they engage with many consumer products, while weather and operational disruption can shape their judgments. His six-part 6X model brings expectations, experience, externalities, expression, execution and a distinctive brand factor into the same discussion. The argument is that advertising promises need to match everyday delivery, including when circumstances are difficult.
Trust and business-to-business aviation marketing
The same emphasis on trust informs his account of work beyond passenger airlines. For engine and aircraft manufacturers, he says, the audience changes to business decision makers, so customer journeys, advisory boards and carefully targeted campaigns matter. He recalls an Engine Alliance air-show campaign built around a tweeting engine, while arguing that manufacturers need to earn trust through leadership and conduct even when order backlogs are large. Nigam also presents SimpliFlying’s pandemic health-safety ratings and subsequent sustainability practice as responses to changing trust concerns. Sustainability, in this account, requires credible action as well as communication.
The unfinished work of Indian airline branding
Looking at Indian airlines around the Vistara merger, Nigam praises Vistara’s premium positioning and wishes more of its brand equity could have survived. He admires IndiGo’s consistency, linking its advertising and product naming to a recognisable identity. Air India presents a harder challenge: he argues that leadership, staff training and service delivery must underpin the new brand while the physical product becomes more consistent. He also sees opportunities to retain heritage and showcase Indian premium brands. These are assessments of a transition in progress, rather than a verdict on a completed turnaround.
Different airport customers, different experience needs
For airports, Nigam connects effective marketing to serving different passenger needs, from quick business trips to family travel and assistance requirements. He praises Bengaluru’s experience and visual identity, while explicitly acknowledging that he had not visited its new terminal and was judging its appearance from photographs. The conversation closes with his account of positioning Bombardier’s C Series around freedom from legacy constraints. His team translated engineering and user benefits into a campaign for several audiences, illustrating his broader belief that a persuasive aviation brand needs a clear reason to matter to the people who encounter it.
Questions & answers
What does Nigam’s 6X approach say about aviation brands?
The model joins passenger expectations, the actual experience, external disruption, expression, execution and distinctiveness. Its premise is that marketing and delivery cannot be separated.
How does marketing an aircraft engine differ from marketing an airline?
The manufacturer addresses business decision-makers and technical buyers, requiring a different journey, evidence base and set of relationships.
What can a merger do to an established airline brand?
Nigam valued Vistara’s premium equity and argued that a merger presents choices about which elements to preserve while integrating operations and products.
Why does he regard IndiGo as a branding reference point?
His assessment emphasises consistent expression, naming and service expectations. This is an interpretation of the brand at the time, not a current performance verdict.
Can airports speak to every passenger in the same way?
Nigam argues that business passengers, families and travellers needing assistance have different priorities. His observations about Bengaluru’s new terminal were based on photographs, not a personal visit.
Sources & attribution
Original conversation: The Indian AvGeek — Episode 15. Published 10 November 2024.
Historical context: This is an editorial analysis of a conversation recorded and released in November 2024. Guest assessments, future plans, regulatory proposals and commercial claims reflect that historical discussion and are not presented as current, independently verified developments.
Editorial method: Questions and answers are carefully edited explanatory paraphrases—not verbatim interview quotations. Commentary, figures and claims requiring updated verification should be checked against the recording and contemporaneous official sources before final public release.