Frontier Airlines EarlyReturns (Pre-Alignment) - New Ad Campaign

Frontier has begun to blanket Denver TV with its new ad campaign, "A Whole Different Animal." Apparently the commercials are produced by the same group that came up with the Budweiser "Talking Frogs."

The ads are actually pretty creative and funny - if you haven't caught them on TV yet you can check them out at http://www.frontierairlines.com/about/commercials.asp

They've got this new webLynx thing also, which I can't figure out.

Note to Frontier - cute animals are nice, but why not complete the thought? If you're gonna be the "nature" airline, create a mechanism where a tiny portion of fare cash goes to animal causes or on-board drinks are served in recycled cups.

I don't find this branding to be a particularly compelling reason to fly F9. An environmental commitment would make you guys a slam dunk for metro Denver/Boulder customers.

well Denver/Boulder should be grateful for the fact they have an alternative to UA.... regardless of recycling (although it would be a good effort)..

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by JeremyZ:
They've got this new webLynx thing also, which I can't figure out.

</font>

webLynx appears to be their replacement for Spirit of the Web fares....same concept, new name.

http://www.frontierairlines.com/specials/webLynx.asp

-Mike

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by mbflyflyaway:
webLynx appears to be their replacement for Spirit of the Web fares....same concept, new name.

[snip]
</font>

This is what it says on that page you referenced:

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Welcome to webLynx. The webLynx pages of our site will highlight special fare offers. Each individual sale will have it's own identity, but this is the "home" for those special fares to live.</font>

There's probably a worse way to phrase the above, but I don't know what that might be. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Spirit of the Web became:
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">We changed it's name, but the basics remain the same. Our great weekend discount fares are now called WWW (Wild Weekend Web) Fares.</font>

Frontier's making the rookie mistake of being a little too "inside baseball" (as they say in the marketing game). The Weblynx page should tell us to return for fare sales, not give us the mechanics of how a specific fare might end up on the page "with its own identity." The press release about the new slogan should tell us why they're a "whole different animal," not how they arrived at the decision to brand that way.

Hey Frontier - we don't want a window into your marketing department. Try to convince us that you're the right airline, not that you're clever marketers.

I dunno why this is bothering me so much.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by UAPremierExec:
well Denver/Boulder should be grateful for the fact they have an alternative to UA.... regardless of recycling (although it would be a good effort)..</font>

It is great that frontier is in Denver, and every experience I've had on Frontier has been top notch, but...

They are hardly what I consider a discount airline. I don't know for sure who matches who with the airfares (Frontier and United - I'm sure that United follows Frontier's lead), but if you are buying a ticket with any time in advance, its hard to say that Frontier is a discount airline of any kind.

For example, I am planning a trip in late June to DFW. Disregarding what you read on Orbitz, and trying to get the best fare I could from any airline flying nonstop (I don't have an interest in paying extra money to Orbitz - since they were created by the airlines), Frontier ranks up there with United as some of the most expensive flight options out of Denver.

Why would I buy a Frontier ticket?

Frontier needs to take the fight directly to United and force a little competition. They are so busy worried about tail art and not straying too far from United's fares that I will be buying my tickets on American Airlines, which will save me about $80 for two passengers, and will also net me more legroom (until they do away with the More Room thing).

I don't think F9 technically *is* a discount airline. It's a "low cost carrier," but not a "low fare carrier," per se. They seem to sell one-way fares more reasonably than the majors and walk-ups are not as expensive as UA, but, yeah, their 21+ day before fares are not particularly competitive.

If you've checked the "help wanted" sections recently, they're hiring a bunch of marketing/FFP people. Maybe we'll see a little more creativity from them in the future.