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“Most people involved with the airplane were not aware of it,” says Rob Pollack, Boeing Commercial Airplanes vice president Advertising, Brand and Market Positioning, and the chief architect behind the Dreamliner brand.

“We didn’t have widespread discussion of it and that was kind of done on purpose. And when we moved the airplane the night before, we wrapped it, it was kind of fun to really surprise an audience of that size.”

What was unveiled on February 13 in Everett – now known as the 747-8 ‘sunrise’ colors – was a radical evolution of the company’s rebranding that first began in 2003 with the blue 7E7 livery. Pollack says the need to differentiate the 787 among a global audience, as well as geopolitical realities, drove Boeing’s development effort:

The Boeing livery itself had basically been unchanged from the introduction of the 757 and 767, so we were going on 20-25 years. The market for this airplane was going to be well over half outside the US. So one of the things we really thought about was from a customer standpoint.

This was 2003, Iraq had become an issue, the US government was not loved around the world and so our thought was, rather than do red, white and blue, why don’t we do something that was more readily understood around the world, and blue as a color – the sky – so we decided to pursue that direction, but we also wanted to get something that looked really different from a livery standpoint because an airplane that is pretty consistent in its look, from a paint standpoint, doesn’t really look that different. Everything we tried to do was to try and differentiate the product from what had come before it.

The company’s branding of the 7E7 (subsequently the 787) had been part of a transformation by Boeing to offer a product to the airlines and their customers, representing a major shift by the airframer from a business to business focus to business to consumer. Pollack says in Boeing’s history, its past commercial aircraft had been given a name along with its numerical designation, like the 307 Stratoliner and 377 Stratocruiser. 

“Some reason we had gotten away from that,” he says, aiming to “build a personality around the name.”

The Dreamliner name, selected in a worldwide vote of four possible names, edged out Global Cruiser (which was preferred by then-BCA CEO Alan Mulally) by 2,500 votes from more than half a million cast. Stratoclimber and eLiner, were a distant third and fourth. It was out of this marketing appeal, in part, that Boeing helped realized its significant market success with the 787.

It was with this branding in mind that Boeing started down the path of developing a unique colors scheme for the first 747-8I. First introduced with Pan American World Airways in 1970, the 747 and its iconic hump have made the jumbo universally recognized for the past four decades. Though re-introducing a 40 year old brand, especially in light of the market competition from the Airbus A380, required something extra. Boeing looked to the Porsche 911, first introduced in 1963, which has evolved significantly under the hood, yet its shape has remained fundamentally unchanged.

“We had the realization that although this looked like the 747s of old, enough had changed on this airplane that it really wasn’t the same airplane as what people had come to know as the 747. So much of the airplane is new and we weren’t, from a marketing perspective, satisfied that we were conveying well enough how completely new this airplane was.” says Pollack.

Political turmoil across the Middle East and North Africa is having a chilling effect on tourism in the region, driving up the price of oil to above $105 a barrel, threatening airlines worldwide. But what of the health of the aircraft orders in one of the fastest growing parts of the world?

This post is an expanded version as one part of a cover story appearing in next week’s issue of Flight International Magazine. See more photos from the premier of the 747-8 Intercontinental.

Photo of Note: First 787 Dreamliner for China Southern, originally uploaded by flightblogger.

EVERETT — I’m back in the factory overlooking the 787 final assembly line and sitting at position one in final body join is Airplane 34, the first Dreamliner for China Southern. China Southern joins ANA, JAL, Air India, RAM and LAN as 787 airframes in Everett.

EVERETT — I had an opportunity to get up close with the 747-8 production system over the past two days and see the new jumbo freighter – and Intercontinental – on the assembly line. The pictures begin with production test flight departure (not delivery flight) of an Air New Zealand 777-300ER for Auckland, lead into the Everett factory’s 40-21 and 40-22 buildings and culminates with photos from the premier, as well as the daylight roll-out of the ‘Sunrise’ livery. You’ve got 210 photos to sift through, so make sure you carve out some time after watching Movie Monday.