In June United unveiled the details of Polaris, which is their new longhaul business class product. Not only is United introducing a new hard product (which is long overdue, given that none of their longhaul planes feature direct aisle access from every seat), but they’re also introducing a new service concept to go along with it.
While the service concept will be rolled out later this year, the problem is that the new hard product will be rolled out throughout the fleet at a snail’s pace, so it will likely be at least five years until a vast majority of United’s longhaul fleet has the new product (and in the process they’re phasing out international first class).
I’m curious to try Polaris, and I have to say that the marketing is excellent. In reality most of the things they’re marketing are very minor and aren’t really innovative (oh, free bottled water!), though they’re able to package the whole thing in a way that sounds appealing. Ultimately it will come down to the flight attendants to execute the service, because without motivated flight attendants who put in the effort, the soft product will fall flat.
Anyway, when Polaris was introduced United released a roughly three minute informational video about the product:
However, yesterday United released their first 30 second ad about Polaris:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXzMQ34dIMY
Boy is it… aspirational!
What do you make of United’s first Polaris ad?
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