New ad is nice, but Qantas needs a lot more than advertising to save itself

This guy knows his stuff!

Personally, I don’t like the ad. Its too long before you find out who is doing the advertising. I saw it on the weekend and remember saying to my husband “what is this ad about”. Its the type of ad you flick to another channel before it ends. Doesn’t make me want to fly QANTAS.

‘Trusted brands have committed customers who are not only willing to recommend them to friends and family, but display a willingness to pay higher prices: a ‘trust’ premium’.

This is a popular idea but doesn’t resemble real life. These people are only a tiny tiny portion of the customer base of any brand. Very tiny.

Qantas biggest opportunity is in reaching the much less committed and much less frequent travellers. Because there are so many more of these types of buyer, and their knowledge/interest in the brands previous problems is very small.

@Eaon pursuing the less frequent traveller will send Qantas broke faster than even the current management – the airline needs profit, and profit comes from frequent flyers, especially those in Business and First. The rest are just there to stop the plane from being nose heavy Paul Nelson delivers a sensible plan. Too sensible I suspect for the current management. His plan requires new management with skills beyond the current CEO and board..

@Eaon, price conscious shoppers can be a large part of the category – think iron ore, coal, sugar, flour, and increasingly these days… white bread. But as builders of brands I don’t see that as a segment we should actively seek to grow. We have a saying that strong brands have customers who are “disinterested in alternatives” regardless of price. I’d argue they are the segment we want to grow and then increase profitability at the same time. I believe Qantas needs to build an emotional connection with the audience who are less focused on the price of the ticket – they will do that through their people, as its them who deliver the experience worth paying a little bit more for.

I recently had a self-inflicted flight issue and went to the QF sales desk for help.

The blokes there went above and beyond to solve the issue and get me and my family home that night. It should in theory have cost us $1k, but it ended up costing nothing. They didn’t have to do it, they just did.

That’s the type of experience that builds advocacy and loyalty.

Paul,
If you are inferring the Reichheld and Sasser hypothesis, that has been proven to be a false assumption.

Paul – I totally agree! Much like the way that Telstra markets its self. Qantas should not be going after the price concious, but those willing to pay for a more “premium” experience.

Qantas would do well to look at what Air NZ did over ten years ago, in the wake of 9/11 and the Ansett debacle. Yes, new brand positioning and new ads, but, crucially, a massively reinvented customer-centric design project that affected everything from cabin design to catering to uniforms.
Because, nice as this ad is, Paul is right. It is a band-aid on a sucking chest wound.

Enjoying the ongoing conversation here, thanks.
@eaon, your comment had me charging back to my uni texts! …So I wasn’t really in the space of “strong causality between customer retention and firm profit” – proven or otherwise. I was really only discussing the fact that all markets have clients and prospects that have predispositions that motivate them to move towards or away from a particular brand or offer. There will always be a segment seeking the cheapest price, these to me are the least attractive – unless of course you have a price and cost leadership positioning, but I don’t include Qantas here. Brand portfolio management helps here too – as evidenced by Jetstar’s position, relative to Qantas. So if Qantas is seeking to attract the non price driven segment they need to create an experience that justifies this and that will largely be down to its people.

So, what’s really being said here is that ‘Brand’ Advertising can only go so far in creating behavioural change as it is overshadowed by the brand experience and in Qantas’ case, existing negative brand perceptions.
All the ads in the world won’t change the outcome of a negative brand experience and if Qantas believe this ad will then they are being given dodgy advice.
The money would be better spent addressing the customer-service experience and delivering a service that is better than their competitors – and then possibly communicated thru advertising that reinforces the service commitments that have been implemented. But it’s questionable as to whether this needs to be a fancy ad – good PR would work if they actually had a story to tell.

Not sure I’ve read something on Mumbrella that I agree with more than this piece.

If Qantas focused hard on their product/service the people will come back especially with such a powerful and iconic brand. I think Australian travelers really want to like Qantas it’s just that they make it hard and let us down.

However as Paul points out this approach has to start with the leadership and I’m not sure the current leadership strike me as a group that have the desire and/or understanding on how to do this.

Me and other advertising mates have been discussing the advertisement at length. QF is a far better experience then any other airline. I’m willing to pay a premium and most of my mates are for that experience. This ad has hit the nail on the head and if I was still doing the overseas thing and saw this, I would be flying home immediately. QF has loyal customers not just for their frequent flyer program but for the brand and experience. Beats any domestic carrier at minimum.

Neat trick an ad exec mate taught me is to invert any message being peddled. That’s how you interpret what said business is terrified of.

Maccas, healthy. Combank, community minded. Qantas, Australian. ie Unhealthy, sociopaths, not-Australian.

Fuck Qantas.

In fairness, I would imagine that the exec team at Qantas realise that adverting alone isn’t going to get them out of their current predicament. It will play a part in improving consumer sentiment – however, I’m sure they’re experienced enough to know that they have other levers they need to pull.

Paul can you pls provide the evidence underpinning this assertion: “When many Australians think of Qantas today they call to mind the 2011 global fleet grounding, the replacement of Qantas routes with budget partner Jetstar flights, sending maintenance jobs offshore, safety scares and recent rounds of large scale redundancies”.

These are definitely the points that fall out of a Google search on Qantas if you have the intention of drawing up a list of potential reputational negatives.

But this is not the same as actual audience research, which Qantas/Lawrence undertook and which Olivia Wirth claims supports the reintroduction of brand advertising at this time.

Paul, you’ve publicly criticised Qantas for not basing its brand advertising decision on research, when the company claims it has. This is not an insignificant detail.

Hence you need to supply your contradictory research, otherwise the rest of us have no choice but to assume that your comments are opportunistic, baseless assertions, which are not untypical of brand consultants but which are hardly fair on Wirth and Lawrence.

@sammy, It was certainly not my intent to suggest that Qantas didn’t base its brand advertising on research. In my article I acknowledge that it is a beautiful piece of advertising – and I also mentioned that the ad’s insight taps into the experience for Australians, especially when heading home.

My primary point which I really sought to make was that advertising alone would not be enough to repair the Qantas brand.

It’s difficult to comment on the research that was undertaken by Wirth and Lawrence without having seen it, but any research is heavily dependent on who is consulted and what questions are asked. The creative execution suggests that Wirth and Lawrence conducted consumer insights research, and then successfully linked their campaign to the research findings. However, I wonder if they also spoke to employees to seek their perceptions on the campaign spend compared to other investments that may more directly improve the customer experience. I would suggest that recent annual results paint a quantitative picture that the brand is clearly damaged compared to in previous years – at least in terms of passenger numbers and profitability, both domestically and internationally. It’s one thing to create a beautiful piece of advertising that taps into an emotion-based client insight, but it is quite another to repair a deeply damaged brand in the minds of consumers and a large and nation-wide employee base.

I would also suggest that, viewed through a strategic brand lens rather than a purely advertising-led lens, it is investment in the customer experience that will have a longer-term impact on the profitability and viability of the organisation as a whole. But more than happy to have that discussion. Thanks for joining the conversation.

Paul is on the money-the Qantas brand has been smashed-spare us the Qantas/Lawrence research. Seriously such an independent voice. In the 17 posts above not one has referenced yield/revenue/profitability. Marketers continue to work n an irrelevant bubble