Lufthansa’s Sneaky Product Launch Shows Off What The Airline Could Have (Should Have) Looked Like

Last week saw a new brand partnership take its first steps between Adidas and Lufthansa. Last Friday, if you flew with the airline you might have seen a slightly more relaxed approach to the uniforms due to the airline – in a one-time-only event – allow crew to wear trainers.

This was conveniently timed to coincide with the launch of a new Lufthansa branded sneaker by Adidas which were exclusively available to Lufthansa employees. This clever partnership helped bring Lufthansa’s new and somewhat controversial brand image to life outside of the usual aviation sphere.

While the airline’s ‘Sneaker Day’ was a one off stunt, Lufthansa isn’t the only airline to allow a more relaxed approach to footwear for customer facing staff. Joon, the Air France upstart has allowed white trainers as part of its capsule collection uniform since day one, helping reinforce itself as an airline that identifies itself for Millennials.

However, these smart limited edition sneakers also let us in to a world where the almost banished golden Yellow colour shines forth. When Lufthansa revealed its new livery (twice) the golden yellow crane was clearly lacking, and yellow was given a background role in the brand of simply highlighting an action or imparting emotion.

The sneakers however give (what we feel) is a better balance of how the brand should have approached its new colour palette with a larger injection of yellow offsetting the typically corporate blue and large swathes of white negative space.

Could this be the first step in Lufthansa slowly, and confidently bringing back the yellow, creating a unique and easily identifiable brand colour palette? One thing is for sure, looking at the press images, these trainers – while for one day only – certainly brought a sometimes elusive ‘human’ element to Lufthansa’s usual visual tone of voice.