This is a short tribute page to the airline 'Go' which ceased to exist in 2002. Before then - in the latter half of the 2001 I had reason to travel with them several times and totally consued by their catchy logo and advertising campaign - visually as well as on the radio. Thus, I was quite sad when Easyjet bought out 'Go', and decided to have this page in memory of some happy travelling times for me. There used to be a page at www.iheartgo.com as well, which contained more stuff that what I've got here, but last time I checked - it had gone and the domain had gone back to a 'holding' page. The 'Go' logo
You don't realise how infectious it is until you starting singing along with the "Go go go go.. GO!" bit at the end - most infectious. You haven't heard a typical go ad? Ok, here's what one sounds like. [314Kb MP3] Also, what I really liked about their marketing was just the sheer simplicity of it all. Big colourful round blobs and simple black text. And look at the way that they deliberately place word go in a corner, or bottom, or edge of something so that part of the letter is truncated. Nice. As it looks better like that than when you see the word "go" just by itself.
Also, it was reported to me at the time that the shuttle trains at Stansted airport (which is where Go fly out of in London) play the Go theme music (as in the advert) no matter what airline you are flying with as you travel out to the departure gates!
The point is - it totally worked. Go became the fastest every start-up budget airline in the history of, er ... all budget start up airlines! BA has to cancel some of its scheduled flights to certain European destinations because no one was flying with them anymore, as they were all going with Go instead. Ironic really, seeing as Go started out as a subsidiary of BA, who then sold them off. Go taken over by Easyjet
Also, there is a new easyJet advert on the radio, which although quite different from the catchy 'Go' jingle, is sort of irritatingly catchy in it's own sort of way. Rest assured when I record a copy of it, I'll stick it up on the site. If you go to the go website, it now redirects you to the Easyjet one, and the easyJet website now has a banner saying "Book your Go flights here". So although the branded for 'Go' hasn't totally gone yet, it is one it's way out. It was summed up for me my the large sign that is above the boarding gates at Stansted airport, easyJet loves Go indeed ... !
Technically, the name of the company was 'Go Fly', but often just traded as 'Go'. This is not to be confused with a Hawaiin airline called "Go!", which started operating in 2006. Barbara Cassani was the chief executive for Go, and wrote an excellent book on the short history of the airline. |
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First
up was their fantastically catchy marketing campaign. They had colourful
posters which you didn't realise were everywhere unless you were looking
out for them, but they did get plastered everywhere. Buses, taxis,
underground trains and normal billboards. I was even in a pub in Tottenham
once after a football game and realised that there were Go beer
mats out on the table.
Then,
there was their amazingly catchy radio advertising campaign.
To
cap it all, what amused me was that after I'd flown with them a couple
of times last years I noticed that they have a phrase written on the side
of each of their planes, such as 
The
result of this is that the whole queue boarding - say - a Ryan Air flight
end up humming the Go theme tune to themselves.
easyJet
bought out Go during 2002, and when taking a holiday
in September of that year, I thought it would be the last chance that
I would have to take some pictures of their slogans, logos and advertisements.
