Smart simplicity: AirPlus is positioned as the expert for corporate payment

Corporate payment expert AirPlus International is already well-known in the area of business travel accounting, but its offerings and expertise now extend much farther. AirPlus products and services simplify the often complex processes surrounding the payment, accounting, analysis and monitoring of corporate expenses. Some 53,000 companies around the world take advantage of AirPlus‘ comprehensive service for the entire procurement process, so that they can focus on their day-to-day business.

In order to reflect this customer benefit more clearly, AirPlus commissioned Peter Schmidt Group to update its brand identity. The agency developed an emphatically digital look with convenient user interfaces that allow for maximum flexibility of use. The redesign retains strong brand assets like the AirPlus name and the trustworthy dark blue of the previous visual identity, and enhances their impact by combining them with energetic colors. Translucent layers overlap to achieve a bright appearance. The logo has also been redesigned, with the previous serif typeface being replaced by a modern, unambiguous font that corresponds to the rounded corners of the colorful graphic elements.

Design as a reflection of the company’s positioning

The redesign itself was preceded by an in-depth strategic analysis and a positioning process also supported by Peter Schmidt Group. From the outset, an extraordinarily broad base of AirPlus employees were involved, with more than 360 of them participating  in ideation sessions and surveys, because the aim was to develop a brand identity that employees could identify with. Interviews and surveys with customers and business associates, alongside evaluations from Google Trends and AI-supported media monitoring, aided in the evaluation of the competitive environment. All this helped develop an understanding of the value proposition that AirPlus stands for. Michael Heilmann, executive director of marketing at AirPlus International, explained, “Whether it’s the high quality of the data, our completely new IT infrastructure, or the seamless integration of the products in our customers‘ internal processes – all of this could be summarized in a single statement: We make corporate payment smart and simple.” AirPlus’ transformation from a service provider for business travel management to a “smart simplifier” is also evident in the company’s new tagline: “Smarter Payment. Better Business.”

The Brand Neuroscape model developed by Peter Schmidt Group was used to ensure that the brand’s visual appearance reflects its strategic positioning. The model uses implicit survey methods to reveal the subconscious perception of design codes among the various, relevant target groups. The survey covered 3665 respondents worldwide. “Not only can we claim that the new AirPlus corporate identity exactly reflects the new positioning – we can in fact prove it,” said Nils Driever, senior brand strategist at Peter Schmidt Group. “At the same time, we are ensuring that AirPlus differentiates itself both from its better-known competitors in the B2C sector, and from new fin-tech offerings that are now flooding the market.”

Setting the pace in a fast-changing industry

The strategic and visual re-positioning of AirPlus is a logical next step for the company, which finds itself in a radically changing market environment. As Michael Heilmann explains, “As many other areas of daily life, also payments have become more and more digital, with the global pandemic further accelerating this development for both consumer and corporate solutions. To offer customers intelligent, market-leading products and services even faster than before, AirPlus has built a completely new IT infrastructure and digitized all products, thereby simplifying numerous processes for customers. Moreover, we have enabled companies to easily pay for business expenses outside business travel by launching dedicated virtual credit cards and by entering into partnerships with several prominent players of the procurement industry.”

With its Virtual Cards Procurement, AirPlus is demonstrating in practical terms what the ”smart and simple” principle means for customers. Customers can use virtual credit cards for ad-hoc and online purchases of a wide range of goods and services including hardware, software licenses, office supplies, books and other publications, online advertising, and even Internet domains. A virtual credit card is generated for each transaction – with worldwide acceptance thanks to the global Mastercard network. All transactions are then settled centrally and bundled in a collective invoice. This efficient method saves processing costs.

AirPlus is also the industry leader in automated invoice reconciliation. The company’s merge rate of 99.7% sets standards in the market, as does its data quality completeness rate of about 95%. Thanks to a network of 4000 partners, customers can also rely on global reach and acceptance for all AirPlus products.