It’s Just Plane Odd
The Williams F1 team continued to push the boundaries of acceptable marketing strategies this week, when they painted a passenger aircraft in their familiar racing livery.
TG Daily reports that an odd looking Airbus A320 was delivered to Malaysian low-cost carrier AirAsia yesterday. Sporting a striking blue and white colour scheme, the plane was covered in many of the logos from the team’s main sponsors, while the tail proudly reminds eveyone that AirAsia are the official airline for the AT&T Williams Formula One team.
It’s the cockpit however, that’s most striking. Chosen, one would assume, in order to fit a different selection of sponsors onto the airframe, the front section is painted to look like Nico Rosberg’s helmet!
Personally I wouldn’t fancy being greeted on the runway by this thing, but I have to admit the look is quite impressive. What will they think of next?
February 8th, 2008 at 8:01 pmdaniel said:
nice one! have not seen that before (will get post in the morning..).
dont know if you had it here, a few weeks ago i found some pix of the abu dhabi grand prix etihad-airplane. my blogs in swedish, but youll get the links for more;
http://f1bloggen.se/2008/01/13/bilder-pa-etihads-f1-flygplan/
February 8th, 2008 at 8:27 pmClive said:
I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember when British Airways started experimenting with weird designs on the tailplanes of its aircraft - ranging from the quite funky to the seriously tasteless. This AirAsia idea is much cooler and looks great, in my ever so humble opinion. The Nico helmet touch is sheer brilliance!
February 8th, 2008 at 8:36 pmbrendan stallard said:
“Personally I wouldn’t fancy being greeted on the runway by this thing”,
Me,
Why not?
I’d far rather that than a lot of the ambient advertising that plagues us day to day, at least you can turn away from the thing and not look:)
brendan
February 8th, 2008 at 8:37 pmSteven Roy said:
I think without the helmet it would look very dull and corporate. It needs the helmet to draw attention.
February 8th, 2008 at 9:13 pmme said:
cheers daniel, i hadn’t seen that one.
my issue with the cockpit is that it doesn’t blend in at all. like a designer spent ages making everything fit, before someone piped up and said:
methinks they could’ve done a much nicer job of blending it in with the curves of the fuselage.
February 8th, 2008 at 9:27 pmme said:
nb: post title updated, cause christine came up with a better one!
February 8th, 2008 at 9:33 pmDan Brunell said:
Excuse me as I channel my inner Jeremy Clarkson:
The thing looks like a Jamaican taxi… I bet does the same as a Williams; finishes in the middle of the pack and all of their best pilots get taken by better airlines… I wonder if this plane has also ran over one of its’ grounds crewmen?… I wouldn’t want ride this plane. It must breakdown a quarter of time in flight… The sat-nav probably only points towards the hanger…
February 8th, 2008 at 11:20 pmLee Vilenski said:
That helmet looks like a plane! What, it is? Get out of here! Seriously, that doesn’t look good…
February 9th, 2008 at 3:34 amF1Wolf said:
nice little extra exposure for all the team sponsors …
when talking about air travel and F1 connection - anyone spotted the remarks of Vijay Mallya at the car launch when he said that due to his relations with Airbus the team has access to some Airbus facilities ?
February 9th, 2008 at 4:09 amAlenyaa said:
Sounds like a possible wind tunnel venue to me.
February 9th, 2008 at 8:54 amGuru’s Weekend Giveaway - 2nd Edition | Biz Gift Guru dot Com said:
[...] of all the 2008 Formula 1 team logos and Air Asia, one of the sponsors of the Williams F1 team painted one of their planes in the team’s colours, with helmet of Nico Rosberg [...]
February 9th, 2008 at 11:40 amme said:
agreed. i think it’s causing some controversy with other teams and the budget cap idea too.
February 9th, 2008 at 11:55 amdaniel said:
found another fun thing, check out williams and airbus logo; got a picture at
http://f1bloggen.se/img/team/williams/williams-airbus.jpg
(although the w in williams is just a small part of its logo now i think)
February 9th, 2008 at 1:56 pmLee Vilenski said:
The problem is that ATM the teams don’t really need another Wind Tunnel. I mean, you all know what the new rules are saying about wind tunnels.
February 9th, 2008 at 2:47 pmAlenyaa said:
Ah yes, good point!
February 9th, 2008 at 3:52 pmAndrew from Pittsburgh said:
So what does Nakajima think of this? I mean, they put Rosberg’s helmet on the plane; should we be looking out for a Nakajima Airbus as well?
February 9th, 2008 at 4:12 pmdaniel said:
no, the ground crew at the airport will veto it;
http://youtube.com/watch?v=QI6bqQa5EMI
February 9th, 2008 at 5:00 pmChristine said:
February 9th, 2008 at 11:25 pmjoe shmoe said:
so, who cares what the plane looks like. fly me home, you see the plane for 2 seconds before you get on.
February 10th, 2008 at 2:41 pmLee Vilenski said:
If I was going to be flying somewhere, and I saw that the plane looked like that, I’d wonder what I had been sniffing…
February 10th, 2008 at 6:00 pmme said:
ha! yup, me too.
i wonder what the pilot thinks of it all?
“i trained for all these years, for THIS??”
February 10th, 2008 at 6:40 pmLee Vilenski said:
True! They would have probably wondered what they’d been sniffing as well.
February 11th, 2008 at 11:14 pmme said:
daniel, i’m ashamed to admit i haven’t checked your site out in a while, but have just had chance to look again.
i won’t pretend i understand everything you’ve written, but you have some decent original content on there. have added the site to our links page so i don’t forget again.
February 13th, 2008 at 12:36 amBruno said:
I personnally think this is a great way of generating publicity and it is in line with Mr Tony Fernandez “loud” advertising prowess.
Like it or not, it doesnt matter, it makes ppl talk, stop and think and thats what you need for your sponsors.
Never seen anything like it before and totally love the idea.
Well done AirAsia and Williams.
Bruno
http://www.F1-in-Singapore.blogspot.com
February 23rd, 2008 at 11:27 amdaniel said:
airplane livery and f1 is an interesting combination, and wonder if we’ll see more of it in the future. certainly big money in both businesses.. so i tried to find some more pics (as already commented etihad has one for abu dhabi) in a post here: http://f1bloggen.se/2008/02/23/formel-1-och-flygplan-fortsattningen/
not too much i found, but some old ones. if anyone come across some interesting livery on airplane with f1 connetion just drop a comment with a link!
February 23rd, 2008 at 12:24 pmme said:
there’s loads of them, good find.
my favourite is the qantas jet. looks like the
kangaroofunny looking animal is chasing the car.March 27th, 2008 at 3:03 pmF1 Rewind #2 | Sidepodcast : Your Weekly F1 Podcast said:
[...] Rosberg talks about his helmet design featured on that plane. Kazuki Nakajima talks about not having his helmet design featured on any plane. And Christine [...]