Alaska Airlines is about to launch its new loyalty program, Atmos Rewards, combining Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan and Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles. The name was leaked but we know nothing else about the branding.

We’re supposed to learn more this month ahead of an October 1 conversion of HawaiianMiles into the new program. There haven’t been any statements from Alaska Airlines explaining the name “Atmos Rewards” that I’ve seen – no branding rationale, timeline for a rollout, or even indication of which agency is behind the branding.

Wow, This Is Gonna Be Expensive!

Naming work from a top-tier branding consultancy will involve research, competitor audits, linguistic and trademark screening, focus groups, and iterative design work. To merge two airline loyalty programs you’re probably looking at $1 million in branding work alone.

Then you need to promote the new name and transfer brand equity from two well-known programs into the new one. This involve paid media, social, email, inflight video, airport signage, and partner promotions. Remember also that all of the existing collateral – both online and in meat space – needs to be updated as well.

To reach parity in awareness within 12 – 18 months you’re probably spending $20 – $30 million in the first year at least, though a more aggressive campaign could cost $50 million.

Is Atmos A Good Name?

“Atmos” is vaguely evocative of ‘atmosphere’ or flying and sky. This is relevant to both pre-existing brands and likely carefully avoids favoring one over the other.

It’s short and easy to pronounce. It’s trademarkable. And it should work well across many languages, which is good for Alaska as they ‘go global’ with flights to both Europe and Asia.

On the other hand, both Mileage Plan and HawaiianMiles have decades of recognition and emotional attachment. “Atmos Rewards” starts at zero.

And it’s generic. It could be used in just about any context. It could be a tech brand. It could be a fragrance! Spray yourself with some Atmos and become irresistible! There’s really no immediate communication of miles and points and travel rewards, which means more spending required to establish the brand.

What Actually Makes A Great Brand?

ChatGPT is probably the best recent brand. How many people even know that GPT is a generative pre-training transformer or what that means? But when we first saw a chat tool interacting with AI, we were amazed. The name is great because it’s associated with the thing that’s great, and it’s now a better brand that Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemeni or Meta’s Llama. The name can be clunky if the underlying product delights.

On the other hand, you want to ditch the brand if it has a bad reputation like in The Wire: change the name of the product.

Marriott invested in the generic and meaningless ‘Bonvoy’ and then had to spend heavily to give it meaning. But the botched roll out of the program, which included disappearing member status and account history, imbued it with meaning: getting Bonvoy’d became derogatory – akin to getting ‘hosed’ or subjected to a comedy of errors.

What they really should have done is just resurrected the old ‘Marriott Honored Guest’ name both because it was new to most members and because it would have appeared to also be a nod to Starwood Preferred Guest whose members were getting folded into the new program.

At the very least it would have kept the focus on the guest, which is something that’s felt missing from the brand since the Starwood deal. Marriott’s CEO famously says that they’ll put ‘net rooms growth’ on his tombstone. The corporate priority is mollifying owners, not delivering value to guests. And this is done through reduced program costs, including shifting the cost of free night awards onto members by passing on resort and destination fees (something neither Hilton nor Hyatt do).

Air Canada, on the other hand, launched its new program five years ago after buying it buy from Aimia. They considered giving it a new name. But they already had one of the best, most recognizable brands in Canada. Over time investing in a new name and elevating that name to the stature of what they already had would have been a nine figure investment. Better to put that money into the program itself!

Ultimately a great brand is something you establish with a great product. Brand awareness is terrible for a bad product – it accelerates negative sentiment! Spend the money on a great product, rather than great marketing of a terrible one. Be Be Trader Joe’s, Apple and ChatGPT – not Spirit Airlines! And unless you’re trying to escape a name, don’t invest in a new one even if you’re merging two companies like BB&T and SunTrust becoming ‘Truist’.