TAP revamps marketing strategy

After years of being in the headlines for the wrong reasons, Portugal’s State-owned airline TAP has unveiled a “massive marketing campaign” to reposition its brand.

The marketing drive has been designed by the marketing and publicity agency Bar Ogilvy whose essence is to bring together a “combination of different skills to deliver unexpected solutions that make brands matter”.
The campaign has come up with a new slogan ‘Embrace the World’ (Abraça o Mundo) and according to TAP’s director of Marketing, Justyna Valente, who was appointed in March and directs the campaign “conveys some of the attributes of the Portuguese personality” according to the online news site Eco.
“The brand has suffered quite a lot, lost its consistency in communication both at an internal and external level. It lost its emotional link and was seen as conservative and frozen in time”, said Justyna Valente who now wants the airline to be aligned with “some of the Portuguese personality attributes.”
The aim is to not only “link Portugal to the world and the world to Portugal” but to kindle in each traveller the typical curiosity of the Portuguese” and the attributes of being adventurous, welcoming and fun”.
“TAP represents Portuguese curiosity to discover the world, and aims to transmit the idea that we are adventurous, curious, welcoming and fun and have a good temperament”, she adds.
In addition to new graphics, the campaign also has a sound branding component with music by the Portuguese DJ and producer Branko.
Justyna Valente says that the rebranding campaign actually began more than two years ago during the leadership of Christine Ourmières-Widener. It began by interviewing customers from various parts of the world in order to get a perception of the company and the attributes of the brand.
“It was a wake-up call. TAP is a company that conveys the essence of being Portuguese, but customers say that they didn’t really grasp Portugal well except the logo and the language.”
The idea therefore was to “work TAP’s portugality and bolster the attributes that the company believes are associated with the Portuguese.