kulula: “Flying 101” official press release

Last week a post I did on Kulula’s new aircraft livery caused a traffic jam on my site after being linked to by BoingBoing (one of the world most popular blogs). Luckily I happen to know Kulula’s fantastic advertising & PR agency (King James & Atmosphere of Cape Town), I quickly contacted them and they kindly made up a fun banner to place next to the post in the sidebar of this site. So far the post has been viewed well over 150,000 times on my site alone and counting, and although all my analytics tools failed when the main traffic hit I can see that Kulula had thousands of click throughs to their site, not bad free global exposure.

Today I received the official press release and it looks like more fun paint jobs are being done for their new Boeing 737-800’s, read below to find out more and click on the pictures to enlarge;

“kulula’s latest plane design has been a worldwide hit after being seen by plane-spotters en-route to South Africa. Photos of the new livery dubbed “Flying 101” have since been viewed by millions having appeared on some of the world’s leading blogs, spurring a frenzy of online comments. All this before it even touched down in South Africa.

The design covers the planes exterior in a tongue-in-cheek guide to the various parts of the planes interior, such as the “Mile-high initiation chamber”. The plane is just one of a fleet expansion of eight state-of-the-art Boeing 737-800s (each with a unique livery). As these planes will be replacing the 737-400’s currently used in kulula’s fleet, South Africans can look forward to spotting the new 800’s during this year.

“The “Flying 101” was conceptualised and designed by kulula’s in-house design department. This branding idea is a result of our 2010 strategy to demystify air travel for our fans,” comments Nadine Damen, kulula Marketing Manager.

“Initially spotted by plane-spotters across the globe, our “Flying 101” plane has become famous on the world wide web before touching South African soil,” continues Damen. “We’ve been amazed by the number of blogs that have posted “Flying 101” images as well as the large number of people talking about the new branding on Twitter.”

The first Boeing, branded with the “Flying 101,” landed in Johannesburg on Monday, 8^th February 2010 and will start operating from 13th February 2010.  The second Boeing is currently undergoing its transformation and will appear to kulula fans much like an oversized container box, with the words “this way up” printed on its side, is scheduled to start operating on the 8^th February 2010.”