Norfolk Air

2899 was fortunate to be awarded an exclusive contract as the creative agency for Norfolk Island Government airline, Norfolk Air. Norfolk Air was in operation from 2006 until 2011. 2899 came onboard (pun intended!) in 2008 as a fresh young agency and hit the ground running. We successfully rebranded the airline and created brand guidelines and logo suites for a vast array of stakeholders and outputs from the simplest logo preparations for display boards in Sydney, Brisbane and Auckland International airports, to working with John Holland Aviation Services in Melbourne Australia and producing  the livery for the Norfolk Air Boeing 737-300 passenger jet.

The Norfolk Air contract was a real learning curve for 2899 and occupied most of our time in our early years of establishment as 2899 Design and 2899 Australia Pty Ltd. We worked side by side with the Airline to the point where we established offices next door to Norfolk Air and formulated a strong working relationship with the entity and were instrumental in much of the ‘Joint Marketing Partnership’ work that was established by the Norfolk Island Government, Norfolk Air and Norfolk Island Tourism to ensure consistency in marketing the Norfolk Island destination. Through the Joint Marketing Partnership, 2899 became a ‘go-to’ agency not only for Norfolk Air and Norfolk Island Tourism, but also for many other Norfolk Island travel related businesses including wholesale travel agencies in Australia and on Norfolk Island, accommodation properties, hotels and resorts, tour operators and retail businesses, many of whom we still support today.

The Norfolk Island branding and aircraft livery design were central to the design work we completed for the airline, though some of the photography work we did was among the most exciting. We identified through thorough market research that many visitors to Norfolk Island were not aware of how they would get to the island and assumed small propellor aircraft were operated by the carrier. To combat this we orchestrated and oversaw a specific drive to ensure all destination marketing through the Joint Marketing Partnership featured the liveried Norfolk Air plane which was a jet engined Boeing 737 aircraft. The most exciting part of this was that we got to embark on several aviation photo shoots in Norfolk Island and in Australia and at one point even managed to arrange a low flying pass over the Norfolk Island airport runway, just for promo shots! They were fun times, yet they came to an end in 2011 when The Australian Government opted to underwrite Air New Zealand flight services to Norfolk Island to elevate the financial burden to Norfolk Island of running its own airline (not directly attributed to 2899 Australia’s agency pricing structure – we assure you!).