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HOP! Along with Air France-KLM

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HOP! will soon be joining the pantheon of “creative” airline names when Air France-KLM AF.FR +2.43%unveils a project next week to create a regional airline that will play a major role in the company’s efforts to return to profitability.

HOP! follows a long-established trend in the industry–especially among discount carriers–to adopt onomatopoeically interesting names to give the impression of being young and hip and the opposite of fuddy-duddy which is how up-start airlines like to characterize former monopoly carriers like Air France and Deutsche Lufthansa LHA.XE +0.89%.

HOP! joins a club that includes Buzz, Go, Jazz, Scoot, Wizz, Zip and Zoom, and will be created from Air France’s three existing regional carriers: Airlinair, Regional and Brit Air.

Monosyllabic branding alone isn’t enough to ensure survival in the cutthroat airline industry. Go was set up by British Airways IAG.MC +0.77%but then sold to private-equity firm 3i, while Buzz, created by KLM, ended up being bought by Ryanair RYA.DB +1.46%.

Still, Marcel Botton, head of French branding specialists Nomen, said one advantage of short names that don’t refer to national identity and that simply sound right is that they can be understood in many languages. HOP!, for example, works as well in French as it does in English. Technology companies, most famously Yahoo! YHOO -0.34%, have led the trend for short, catchy names in the past two decades.

A second advantage is that they expand the shrinking inventory of more traditional names that are available to be patented. Mr. Botton’s company wasn’t involved in the name search for HOP!, but he said he likes it. “It suggests something that’s jumping into the air, that is quick and simple with no heavy structure, like a low-cost airline,” he said.

HOP! is also reminiscent of KLM Cityhopper, the regional airline subsidiary of KLM, the Dutch arm of the Air France-KLM group.

The brand was patented by Agence H, a unit of France’s Havas advertising group.

The branding exercise is part of Air France’s project to reduce costs and win new clients at its unprofitable short-haul and medium-haul operations as European airlines compete fiercely to win new passengers as they combat high fuel costs and the region’s sluggish economy. Air France wants the new structure to be operational by April 2013.

Air France hasn’t formally unveiled the corporate identity of the new airline, but airline watchers have seen a sneak peek on the web site of one of Brit Air’s labor unions. Company officials declined to comment ahead of a press event scheduled for Jan. 28.


HOP! Along with Air France-KLM - The Source - WSJ
 
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