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Bombardier Undertakes a Rebranding: Learjet,
Challenger and Global, Period
A major rebranding unveiled here by Bombardier Aerospace groups
its business aircraft into three distinct tribes-dubbed Learjet,
Challenger and Global.
 Gone is the name
Continental-the new aircraft is now the Challenger 300. And finding
a home at last is the Canadair Regional Jet with executive interior,
and the Special Edition--they also become Challengers, with an 800
number. The Challenger 604 remains, well, the 604.
Although not Bombardier's intent, that might quash any talk for
now about a successor to the highly successful Challenger 604.
"When a customer buys into a business aircraft, he or she
buys into a brand," explains Andrew Farrant, general manager
for marketing communications and sales support at Bombardier Business
Aircraft. "Nobody was getting after the emotional side of this.
We wanted to determine the emotional triggers that come into action."
An 18-month brand audit that included heated discussions and a
multitude of focus groups went so far as to ask groups of pilots
to sort stacks of images torn from a wide range of magazines into
four piles-the Learjet pile, Challenger pile, Continental and Global
Express. The Learjet piles invariably yielded sports cars and exotically
designed houses, the Global pile even more so but costing more money.
The Challenger and Continental piles-well, they came out with Ford
Explorers, tweed jackets and Irish setter dogs.
"Three distinct personalities emerged from how pilots regarded
these aircraft," says Farrant. And surprise! The Continental
was really a Challenger!
The Learjet, not surprisingly, was seen as the epitome of performance
and excitement, with a long history as a hot rod. The Global emerged
as the epitome of technology with the prestige of ultra long range.
And the Challenger? Large, good value, with proven technology and
reliability. Somewhat like a top-of-the-line minivan.
It was not hard for Farrant to persuade upper management of the
merit of Learjet and Global families. But in the middle? "Renaming
a product is not something we would do lightly," he says of
the Continental. "But this is just in time before it enters
service next year."
The Continental, Farrant adds, was named at a time when manufacturers
were searching for monikers that said something about what the aircraft
would do, and how it would fit in. The coast-to-coast Continental
and Cessna's similar-sized Sovereign were launched within hours
of each other, "but neither enjoyed much brand recognition"
then or since, he says.
Bombardier is taking the rebranding as an opportunity to rationalize
the way it presents its products, hopefully in a way customers can
understand. And knowing that it has new platforms in the Learjet
range, the Continental (sorry, Challenger 300) and the Global, it
is looking forward to a slew of derivatives and improvements that
can keep the same name rather than pretend they are new models.
Just as BMW has the 300 series and 700 series, you can look forward
to an auto-like evolution of the Learjet 45XR, Challenger 604DX
and Global Express XRS.
But unlike TC in a car name meaning "Twin Cam," XR,
DX and XRS have no meaning except that they all equal "more,
or plus" explains Farrant. The letters were chosen by the focus
groups-XR for the Learjet, DX for the Challenger, and XRS for the
Global. Nobody walked through the parking lot afterward to see which
models of cars carried these model designations!
The three families have also been awarded team colors for branding
and marketing. Learjet takes on racing red in keeping with its racy
image (and Bombardier's marketing agreement with the Indy 500 circus);
the Global, of course, could get nothing but gold. And the Challenger
adopts a deep blue, which is, coincidentally, the color synonymous
with the British Conservative Party and its image of establishment
and fiscal responsibility.
By John Morris
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