Why Thomas Cook is beating with a yellow heart

It’s a question that has to be asked. Why oh why has Thomas Cook dumped the best known catchphrase in travel, along with the familiar globe, and replaced them with a grey slogan Let’s Go and v-shaped ‘sunny heart’. Despite a sleepless night preparing for the relaunch of the Thomas Cook brand, marketing chief Mike Hoban, attempted to explain the rationale to TravelMole associate editor Linsey McNeill.

Why ditch the familiar and much-loved phrase Don’t just book it, Thomas Cook it?

"That phrase works in the UK but it doesn’t translate particularly well in Germany or Sweden or France and we are a global business; we needed something that would work well across all our brands, in all our markets.

So the catchphrase had to go because it didn’t work in other languages?

Not only that. We had all these different brands and there was no consistency across the group. People wouldn’t know that Thomas Cook Sport, Flexitrips and Airtours were part of the same group. We needed to harmonise the brand.

Plus, the brand needed to be revitalised. Brands that don’t refresh themselves die. Too many brands have disappeared from the high street because they didn’t react soon enough. Just look at Woolworths. You have to refresh before it’s too late. And we wanted to make the brand more relevant to more people.

Why the yellow heart and a slogan in grey? It looks like you’re selling health insurance not holidays.

No-one else in travel is using a heart logo and we needed something that reflected our new strategy, that says we are at the heart of travel, that we get excited about people’s holidays.

Let’s Go encapsulates our enthusiasm for selling holidays. Using the grey logo reflects the fact that we are a digital business. We will be using digital technology to enhance the holiday experience.

Which customers are you targeting with this re-brand?

Thomas Cook has been really strong in the beach sun market and that remains just as important to us, but we should be selling more winter sun holidays and city breaks are of growing importance. We want to break into the independent travel market, capture those who typically book online.

How are you targeting independent travellers?

Every store window now shows people they have three ways to book, in store, on the phone and online, and our website,  letsgothomascook.com, will be visible.

So you’re driving business away from the shops to your website?

Promoting our website will be as good for our stores as for our online sales. Where we have increased our regional activity online we have seen our business through our stores grow. And enquiries to our calls centre are diverted to our shops, where we have a wealth of expertise.

How much has all this cost?

Most of the re-branding work has been done in-house so it hasn’t cost a fortune, although I can’t put a figure on it.

When will we see the first brochures with the new branding?

The Florida and Tropical Shores brochures will be the first to come out with the new identity on October 14.

When will the shops be re-branded?

Wimbledon and Peterborough already have the new fascias and by Christmas over 300 shops will have them.  Over the next two weeks, the Let’s Go decal will start to appear in windows in all our shops.

The Co-op stores will remain as a separate brand, but from November they will have the new sunny heart logo in stores.

How much investment are you putting behind the rebrand?

Since June we have been advertising on TV every day of every week of every month. We will continue to be on TV every day and at 6.30 this morning viewer would have seen our new logo. So far this year we have spent £10 million on TV, compared to just £2 million last year. A new suite of TV ads will be coming out later this year. Only confident companies do this.

See Thomas Cook CEO Harriet Green talk about the re-brand