Cover Images of Inflight Magazines as Airlines’ Methods of Impression Management: Alitalia’s Ulisse Magazine and Finnair’s Blue Wings Magazine

Abstract

This research examines the cover images of two inflight magazines—Ulisse (Alitalia) and Blue Wings (Finnair)—as a method for airlines to manage their impression. Drawing on concept of impression management, the study focuses on the visual strategies the cover images employ in order to shape the audience’s perception of the airlines. The data consists of 90 cover images published between January 2016 and February 2020. A visual rhetorical analysis was applied to examine the visual construction of the cover images and their functions. The findings show that the cover images of Ulisse and Blue Wings employed different strategies of visual rhetoric as part of their impression management. Whereas Alitalia seemed to strive for the image of a luxury airline, Finnair endeavored to create an image of an airline for ordinary people. Theoretically, this study contributes to the current knowledge of rhetorical approach to visual impression management in corporate communications. Methodologically, the study advances the research on corporate impression management by applying an analysis of visual rhetoric.

Firm performance feedback and organizational impression management: The moderating role of CEO overconfidence

“…For example, a study by Talbot and Boiral (2015) used six 'neutralization techniques' , including self-proclaimed excellence, promotion of a systemic view, denial and minimization, denouncing unfair treatment and deceptive appearances, economic and technological blackmail, and blaming others as proxies to organizational level impression management tactics. Further, past and recent work on OIM used various proxies, such as the use of corporate apologies (Zhou & Xu, 2023), presentational enhancement and obfuscation (Cüre, Esen & Çalışkan, 2020), cover images of inflight magazines (Martikainen & Adriani, 2023), corporate accounting narratives (Jaafar et al, 2018), and corporate stories (Spear & Roper, 2013) among others. Jaafar et al (2018) argued that firms with a greater tendency to engage in fraudulent financial activities have a higher motivation to use accounting narratives in their annual reports as an impression management strategy.…”