Qantas To Spend $10million In Advertising Revamp

[Nigelinoz]

From:
Image is all for troubled Qantas | The Australian

AS Qantas cuts more staff and reduces its travel routes further, the airline will try to rebuild its brand and image by spending $10million to refresh its decade-old "I Still Call Australia Home" advertising campaign.
The airline has awarded the campaign to agency Ogilvy & Mather after a fierce three-way tender for the revamped version of its well-known slogan.
A significant part of the $10million, which represents more than 10 per cent of the global airline's entire advertising budget, will be spent on TV advertising.
The decision to refresh the ad at a time when Qantas has been forced to cut staff, slash its profit forecast by 66 per cent and raise $500 million from shareholders, was not taken lightly.

 

[codash1099]

From:
Image is all for troubled Qantas | The Australian

If only their ad campaign was all that is wrong with them

 

[zzyss]

Good luck to them. From my own personal experience with them, Singleton, Ogivly & Mather are pretty cough.

Ironically, they're spending $10m to revamp their image after shedding jobs. That money could account for 133 jobs at $75k (obviously the effective salary would be lower). And that's just 10% of its advertising budget. Qantas is the national carrier - maybe if they stopped advertising for a little bit, looked at strategies for increasing efficiency or even reduce their ad spend, they might find themselves in slightly less of a pickle.

But then again, I'm just a pleb who knows nothing about running a national airline.

 

[JohnK]

Personally I feel like I am home everytime I step on a Qantas aircraft overseas and I do not need a commercial to reinforce that belief. Actually I hate that commercial and try avoid it. Why spend all that money?

What we need is for Qantas to improve it's service and place the needs of the customer first at all times not just when the chips are down.

 

[Dave Noble]

Qantas is the national carrier .

Qantas is *an* Australian carrier

Dave

 

[turtlemichael]

Personally I feel like I am home everytime I step on a Qantas aircraft overseas and I do not need a commercial to reinforce that belief. Actually I hate that commercial and try avoid it. Why spend all that money?

For the simple reason that not all feel like you and Qantas wants to encourage those to feel that way.

 

[JohnK]

For the simple reason that not all feel like you and Qantas wants to encourage those to feel that way.

You are probably right.

I wasn't actually referring to Qantas as being the national carrier or national icon. I forgot that there is another Australian carrier with international routes and I would probably feel like I am home if I ever get the chance to step on to a V Australia aircraft overseas.

 

[WTL]

Personally I feel like I am home everytime I step on a Qantas aircraft overseas and I do not need a commercial to reinforce that belief. Actually I hate that commercial and try avoid it. Why spend all that money?

What we need is for Qantas to improve it's service and place the needs of the customer first at all times not just when the chips are down.

But as a Platinum Frequent Flyer with over ten thousand posts on this forum, I suspect you wouldn't really be the target of the campaign.

 

[pauly7]

Good luck to them. From my own personal experience with them, Singleton, Ogivly & Mather are pretty cough.

That is interesting - why do you feel that way? - as I completely disagree, I've use SOM as well and they have always done excellent work for us.

They certainly have created some iconic campaigns for Qantas, some of the most successful on record in Australia as measured by advertising industry benchmarking as well.

 

[JohnK]

But as a Platinum Frequent Flyer with over ten thousand posts on this forum, I suspect you wouldn't really be the target of the campaign.

Yes and no. Sure I am a Platinum frequent flyer as I have been fortunate, or unfortunate, to land a job in another city and travel back home almost every week.

On the other hand I do travel overseas quite a lot, although I have a self imposed 12 month break, and most of these flights went to Qantas. I am not so sure anymore with the obvious reduction in service levels recently and general increase of airfares when times were good. I have close to 300,000 Amex MR points which I did not transfer to Qantas by March 31 and I will use these to fund trips to SE Asia in WHY on carriers other than Qantas in the next few years so Qantas will lose the money from me on overseas airfares.

Again I don't need to be told that they are Austalia's home carrier as V Australia also fits this category. Does anyone actually change their opinion of a company or individual by following advertising campaigns? Maybe I am able to ignore these advertising campaigns better than others....

 

[zzyss]

That is interesting - why do you feel that way? - as I completely disagree, I've use SOM as well and they have always done excellent work for us.

They certainly have created some iconic campaigns for Qantas, some of the most successful on record in Australia as measured by advertising industry benchmarking as well.

Maybe it's just the people assigned to our account, but my impression of them is that they are lazy (both in terms of the creative and traditional sense) and often-times incompetent.

The campaigns ideas that they come up with are often uninspired, bordering on unusable - although the harried marketing department usually just goes along with it because they can't be stuffed thinking about it (probably just as much part of the problem).

As to their incompetence, a few weeks ago, I needed to convey some colour info to a supposed Art Director, so I gave the requested RGB (Red, Green, Blue) values. FIVE phone calls later, where they keep trying to tell me that what I've given them is gobbledegook, somebody finally figures out what I've been talking about all along. You'd have thought that an Art Director, if not the Account Manager, would understand the absolute basics of their field. I'm not even involved in art - I just know a little photoshop from my uni days. I even provided screenshots and everything.

Most people who have worked with them before blame it on their extremely high turnover rate. In the 3 years or so that I've worked with them, more than 50% of the account team have changed. It's impossible to form any kind of lasting understanding with them, because as soon as I've finished training the previous lot, they've gone and been replaced by the next lot.

I don't think much of their copywriting either.

Sorry to hijack the discussion for my rant. I just wonder, given the experiences I've had above, whether Qantas are going to get their money's worth.