Adios Vistara: What made the 'Aubergine' brand take flight

New Delhi: "Welcome aboard. Thank you for flying your final flight with Vistara on November 12, 2024," the announcement will echo as the purple-and-gold brand folds its wings, merging with Air India. 

Vistara stopped accepting bookings post-merger on September 3, 2024. Singapore Airlines, a joint venture partner, will take a 25.1% stake in the new Air India. 

While mergers aren’t new, Vistara stands out for its strong brand recall and customer loyalty. 

But how did Vistara reach here? BestMediaInfo spoke to brand consultants, industry veterans and an aviation expert to understand the sustenance of Vistara as a brand.

Sidharth Grover, former brand head of Vistara, told BestMediaInfo.com, “The consistency in marketing alongside a strong visual identity are the codes it focused its marketing efforts on and are two major things any brand can learn from.”

He believes that even before his stint at Vistara, the aviation company had always prioritised syncing their product with the promise that was communicated in its marketing. 

Grover noted that while the brand's visual identity is rooted in purple, the actual shade is 'aubergine.'

Though the colour may seem a bit unconventional, it’s this distinct hue that helped Vistara stand out, according to Grover.

Vistara: the birth of premiumisation

To divulge its sustenance as a brand, it is pivotal to understand the birth of Vistara which introduced the ‘premium’ segment to consumers. 

Samit Sinha, Founder and Managing Partner, Alchemist Brand Consulting, set the scene by describing how Vistara was launched a decade ago, quickly filling the vacuum left by the absence of Jet Airways and Kingfisher, which were the only two full-service airline brands in India when Air India was struggling with a slew of problems and a poor brand image. 

Alongside Vistara jumping on being the ‘rebound’ factor of two major airlines, Indian domestic flyers, who were happily exposed to luxury flying, had no real ‘premium' option, believes Shivaji Dasgupta, Founder and Managing Director at INEXGRO Brand Advisory. He added that, capitalising on this need, the timing of Vistara was perfectly right.

A decade ago, business travel was a lot about comfort and luxury, according to Lloyd Mathias, an angel investor and business strategist.  

He said that the consumers craved curated cuisine, a great music playlist, quality cutlery and food, and great service—everything that measured to ‘feeling premium’ and Vistara did just that by positioning itself as an aspirational airline service brand.

However, Grover highlighted that while the 'premiumisation' factor helped Vistara soar in popularity, the Indian audience was initially hesitant to embrace the concept.

“We positioned it as a bridge between the economy and business class,” he added, as he recalled how the audience gradually gave Vistara’s premium economy a soft spot. 

Echoing how Vistara got its timing right, Prabhakar Mundkur, advisory director, Miami Ad School, added that though premiumisation in airlines was common, the brand’s livery, the design and everything about the brand’s personality were carefully crafted to reflect the ‘premium’ image. 

Dasgupta opined that its consistent delivery of luxury credentials at a sustainable, steady pace was a game changer as it permitted senior corporate travellers a top-end experience for a modest top-up. 

He said, “In every sense, from aircraft comfort to service to cuisine to aura and later, the IFE of the A321Neo, the airline delivered daily on its top-end promise. What surely helped was the Singapore Airlines association, from imagery to execution.”

However, Ramanujam Sridhar called it a case of “ what might have been,” as it’s too little, too late. He described it as “a brand with a great heritage and promise that couldn’t deliver the high expectations that people had of it.”

On the other hand, Gaurav Rathore, an aviation expert, shed some light on how Vistara’s initial cookie cutter model worked for it, as it took its time to understand how the Indian market was quite different from the Singaporean one and hence needed a different approach. 

Playing up the ‘Tata’ route

Vistara, being a joint venture between Tata with a 51% stake and Singapore International Airlines with a 49% stake, started playing up its Tata image much more than its SIA one to enter the Indian market. 

Rathore highlighted that Vistara personalised its formula to suit what the Indian consumer was looking for and that made the difference.

Sinha added, “And with the Tata pedigree combined with the sterling reputation of Singapore Airlines, Vistara quite easily managed to live up to the high expectations of the more discerning airline passengers and preserve an impeccable record of service and safety.”

Not just a flight, but an experience

Anirban Mozumdar, an independent brand consultant, said that Vistara is testimony that a brand is not a name, an image, a logo and not just its advertising. It is the experience of every single moment and every step of the way embodied at its touch points and in its people. 

Grover highlighted that while Indigo was its biggest competitor by promising on-time performance (OTP), it was not a USP that airline brands could capitalise on. 

Vistara, with its OTP and its consistency in delivering a ‘flight experience,’ succeeded in building a brand with a fleet of customer loyalty. 

Mozumdar added, “Their service and the flight announcements had a distinct style: clear, clean, professional yet heartfelt. No need for alienating swaggers of “boys and girls” addresses or jokes and messages on napkins and headrest covers. They brought the “sit back, relax and enjoy” aspect back to flying.”

He also shed light on the Club Vistara loyalty program and the lounges have a palpable sense of modern elegance and the unmistakable stamp of Singapore Airlines—the epitome and pinnacle of Asian hospitality and service perfection, as those who have travelled and worked or know about the SQ legacy can attest. 

Sanghvi echoed the sentiment and recalled how the brand was ever present at every customer touchpoint, right from the check-in counter to a telephone call to a customer grievance. 

Mathias added that this is something other airline brands can take home from Vistara: adopting a customer-centric approach and ‘raising their standard or aspire towards’ a personal touch that makes flyers feel special and seen. 

Given that with its onset, its two major competitors in the full service carrier sphere—Jet Airways and Air India—were sliding down the list of preferred airlines, Vistara never shackled itself with complacence, which Rathore believes happened to different airlines at different phases of their growth. 

However, Soumitra Karnik, an independent creative consultant, opined that while Vistara excelled in the domestic sector, the airline delayed going international. Another approach could have been a more innovative pricing strategy to retain more travellers for its “accessible luxury." Corporate travellers who were smarting from budget cuts could have been kept within the fold and not be left to experiment with cheaper options. 

He added, “This could have been done through limited-time discounts, dynamic pricing, and targeting specific routes with more affordable fares.”

Passing the baton to Air India

With thousands of mourners for the brand, Vistara as a brand got several things right. According to Mozumbdar, it is the understanding of who the audience is and, most importantly, building care and humaneness, connection and empathy for the flyer and building around them so touchingly and so beautifully. 

With the incumbent merger, Air India, though a legacy brand, is set to take on the pressure of carrying on the efficiency and much-admired servicing of Vistara. 

Sanghvi emphasised how Vistara customers have been attuned to certain very high-quality standards with the airline, which may not come through with Air India. 

On the other hand, Rathore believes that while Air India may be a legacy brand, Vistara has built itself a fresh brand communication in the past few years that stays quite fresh in consumers’ minds. 

Mathias added that while it would be difficult for Air India to fit into Vistara’s wheels, Air India can tap into the equity that Vistara had built in its short but eventful seven years by retaining some of its brand elements. 

He said, “Because there's a sizable residual brand equity for Vistara, which unfortunately may disappear if Air India is not able to pull some parts of it. I think therefore, that's the area that they should focus on. They've acquired a great brand that had a short lifespan.”

He added that while it is a journey to fly the baggage of Vistara’s brand on their wings, Air India needs to focus on differentiating themselves from the rest in terms of their communication, riding on their recent creative campaigns like the in-flight announcement that used Indian dance forms. 

Rathore added that some of its other challenges would be integrating the workforce, diffusing the differences in work culture, and the uncertainty from the consumer’s end as while Air India can only merge what is tangible, the abstract weight of consumer expectations can weigh heavy in the air, quite literally. 

Sanghvi added that the beauty of the merger will lie in terms of making sure this transition is very smooth. 

He added that the challenge is also going to be about facing a lot of backlash on social media owing to Vistara’s customer loyalty and rigorous fan following. 

He also added how consumers may now start noticing little things under the microscope, such as errors at the booking kiosk, check-ins and in the aircraft itself. 

While Air India might face the pressure of carrying Vistara’s standards forward, Sanghvi added that Air India is using all the possible sort of elements that you can think of from a brand marketer's point of view to reposition itself in time for the merger. 

Nisha Sampath, an independent brand consultant, highlighted that a crucial piece that Air India lacks is the connection with the younger generation of flyers, which is something that Vistara does bring.

A consistently professional service experience is also something Sampath believes Air India lacks, compared to Vistara’s effortless expertise in it. 

Vistara-fying Air India? 

With Air India and Vistara being two dominant forces in the airlines category, the question does arise if the merger does more harm than good.

Sanghvi believes that with Air India’s legacy, it was quite the right choice to dismantle Vistara as the latter’s elements could be forged with the former’s to carry that ‘mother carrier of the nation’ recall value. 

Taking a different approach, Sampath opined, “Vistara has not fully leveraged the opportunity to build a powerful brand. Most flyers think of it as a premium and professional airline but not anything more specific.”

She highlighted instances like how SIA will always be associated with the hospitality and warmth of the Singapore Girl, and Indigo is sharply built around the promise of on-time performance. 

She added how budget flyers may not see the need to shell out extra money for an upgrade to Vistara, other than the obvious benefits of flying a full-service airline.

“Air India, on the other hand, has a deeply embedded emotional connection with Indians as our flag carrier,” she added. 

“Pandemics, hijacks and terrorist attacks—the brand has weathered it all. While all of us might at some point have hated Air India, the brand equity definitely is stronger and goes deeper, than Vistara does,” Sampath added, dishing out why the Air India legacy may stand the test of time. 

Karnik however, raised several questions about the merger, including “Would Vistara, as a relatively young airline with a focus on premium services, find its innovative, customer-centric approach diluted within Air India’s larger, more bureaucratic framework? Can Air India be only an international airline while Vistara continues to be a premium airline of choice for its domestic travellers?”

Following a similar train of thought, Pranesh Misra, Founder and Chairman, Brandscapes Consultancy, highlighted that instead of taking down Vistara as a brand,  Tatas should have left Vistara alone as their premium offering. Due to its size, Air India will find it difficult to reposition itself to the premium spot. So with this move, Tatas are leaving money on the table.

Reflecting similar sentiments, Mozumdar added that while Vistara is being killed as a customer-facing brand, the staff and processes of Vistara can be dedicated solely to the premium products of Air India—First Business and PE. 

He added, “Being a state-run carrier for many decades, Air India has lost its original luxury DNA from the JRD Tata days and maybe those earlier with Vistara can help reinstate them sooner and better.”

Mozumdar added, “Vistara might cease to exist as a name—but the Vistara-ness will always linger on for many fliers. That is what powerful brands do.”

Sampath believes that the Tata brand is a case study on staying relevant to India through changing times and across pop strata while standing for core values of patriotism, ethics and service. 

She hoped, “It would be wonderful if the Tatas can mould Air India into a similar, enduring brand across generations,” while adding that in this case, financial acumen might trump brand building in a bid to save an airline. 

Vistara’s brand journey is a case study of several focal points that brands need to take note of, including the timing of conception, fulfilling or creating a consumer need, sustaining with consistency, evolving your brand positioning when the shoe no longer fits and sticking to your core values but evolving the ways you project it.