The strategic decision of the world’s largest airline to introduce such a breakaway brand in this unorthodox fashion leaves us asking a couple of questions: Firstly, what should one expect Ted as a brand to deliver, and secondly, does this move really signal a transformation of major carrier service delivery as we know it?

Let’s try to answer the first question by looking deeper into the brand’s introduction so far. The name itself deserves some discussion. It’s the first case of an airline using a proper name without an “air” qualifier (Ryanair comes close, but you know it’s an airline from its suffix). Ted is monosyllabic, which lends well to the low-fare concept (think Song, Delta’s counterpart, or Buzz from KLM).

But “Ted”? Most would conjure up imagery of a very benign, friendly man. Many think of a Teddy bear. It’s approachable, dare we say embraceable and very human -- welcome associations in a category that many dread to experience. Extracted as the last syllable from its parent’s moniker, it all seems to make sense.

The brand awareness campaign is unorthodox but not atypical of the more innovative approaches to brand introductions in recent years. Ted is showing up almost Big Brother-like in sports arenas, fast food shops, and shopping malls. One sighting reveals a “give-a-penny, take-a-penny” holder relabeled, “Take a Penny from Ted.” These campaign planners thought of everything, and brand awareness is what they’re getting -- at least in Colorado.

So what are Ted’s brand values? If the buzz site, MeetTed.com, is any indication, we should expect no less than the friendly skies of United yore. The opening messages invite us to reclaim life’s most basic pleasures and comforts: “Here’s to denim… Here’s to macaroni and cheese the way you make it.” Invitations to enjoy a weekend on the slopes or in Vegas with friends are interwoven, priming us for accessible travel as the functional benefit. The higher order promise is to reclaim the enjoyments of life that we should be afforded -- a message highly relevant in today’s world of uncertainty and downsizing, one that won’t be lost on this airline’s target audience. Weary travelers should just warm right up to that plane named Ted.

But will Ted deliver on all this warm fuzziness? This brings us to the second question: Is this the beginning of a fundamental transformation in the way major carriers serve their customers? Will Ted be the answer to the tarnished image of United that travelers more often criticize than tolerate?

Before we answer this, let’s momentarily review the industry structure: The post-dot bomb, post-September 11 economy has seemingly taken the lift out from under the wings of the major carriers into the foreseeable future. Both leisure and business travelers have substantially migrated to lower-cost alternatives (Southwest, Jet Blue) and substitutes (video conferencing, less-extravagant corporate off- and on-sites).

Contemporary demand for air travel no longer supports the major carriers’ pre-September 11 cost structure. Back then, such high levels of demand supported what is now an overdeveloped capital and labor infrastructure of redundant hub-and-spoke route systems (where travelers pass through the carrier’s hub airport to board a connecting flight), accommodating a flood of relatively small aircraft flying multiple frequencies. While this infrastructure won’t disappear, it is currently being rationalized.

Major carriers like United need to make all that excess capital productive somehow, so the introduction of low-cost brands like Song and Ted comes as no surprise. Yet consumers today have compelling and expanding choices: Southwest, Jet Blue, Virgin Express, easyJet, Air Asia. From a customer perspective, stimulating demand and regaining market share by merely expanding and re-naming low-cost sub-fleets (e.g., Shuttle by United and Delta Express) won’t be enough.

Sure, Ted will be guaranteed a minimum passenger share based on its mere presence on certain routes, aided by a good dose of brand awareness from the aforementioned campaign. But to enjoy expanded presence and share premiums, Ted’s parent, UAL, will need to raise its newborn with the brand values that live up to Ted’s friendly, accessible moniker and positioning. These values will need to be at the center of the airline’s brand interactions, guiding everything from management-employee dynamics, to attitudes and behaviors of reservations agents, ground staff and flight crews.

A warning: organizing Ted’s employees via traditional major carrier management-union bargaining will be crippling, and simply repainting Shuttle with a new wrapper will be an expensive exercise at best -- one that employees and customers will see through and resent. Time will tell whether Ted’s implied brand values are embodied in a friendly and welcoming travel experience. Let’s hope that the folks at UAL understand the necessary commitments to the brand, its employees, and its customers. At the very least, aren’t they obligated to all those people named Ted to at least try and get it right?

Aaron Danzig is COO and Partner with The Epitome Group, a Boston-based marketing and brand strategy consulting firm. Prior to consulting, Aaron managed several marketing and business development efforts at Northwest Airlines.