Embattled Qantas looks to ‘reconnect’ with passengers with TV-led brand push

The emotion is spot on. The comment ‘it feels like home’ is often said by passengers when they step onto a Qantas plane. These words have been seen in many client letters published in travel press. The connect is real. But I ask has Qantas wasted that passenger connection, I think they have. They have thrown away that once loyal reaction. And how many Qantas international planes are left anyway? Almost no product shown, and so like the the previous campaign this is a softy softy approach. Great footage & expression.

Yawwwwnnnnn.

Seriously? With all the problems facing the airline, why spend (a lot of) money of this “Love Actually” rip-off?

Vindicated, Outraged or Bemused?

I’m not sure what to feel.

This advertising and the strategy it’s based upon is spot on, but 7 years late.

Back in 2007, I was the head of marketing for QANTAS and worked with M&C Saatchi on a brand campaign based on the same insights and strategy as this new campaign.

The tag line was “It’s nice to feel at home.”

We had a series of beautifully crafted TV commercials created by Oliver Devaris and Graham Johnson of M&C Saatchi- two of the best in the business.
We had also built the approach into every level of communication – ready to go

Despite a multi million dollar investment, loads of supporting research and management being kept informed at every step, they were killed stone dead by said management following a presentation of completed TVCs by Tom Dery. No real reason other than they were not ‘ liked.”

I fought hard but lost. Recalling a line from an old Hall & Oats song, “The strong give up and move on, the weak give up and stay,” I moved on. The final straw sort of thing.

Now, I feel somewhat vindicated but cannot help but think of all the time and money wasted in the meantime on the countless changes in strategy & execution over the past 7 years. I really hope they work for QANTAS, and bravo to those who recognised the strength in the ‘home’ connection between the airline and its passengers.

QANTAS needs to be loved.

Ad is spot on. Only Qantas could run this. It is exactly the way that you feel when you see a Qantas aircraft in New York / London or where ever. I had tears in my eyes. R Smith, what nonsense about passenger connection. The best ad in the last 20 years was I Still call Australia home and there was no customer connection in that. This is better, real people with real emotions and a direct connection to Qantas.

Bravo. Got me. Beautiful rendition by Martha Marlow.

Emotionally most Australians want to fly with Qantas. What’s lacking for the business at the moment, I’d argue, are the rationale decision making criteria, which this content does absolutely nothing to address. Probably not fair to judge a strategy on one piece of creative but I believe that the days of trying to pull the wool over the consumer’s eyes with aspirations that don’t stack up are over.

Love the track

It took seven months to cobble that emotional cliché together? Someone’s having a tug.

Do we get Frequent Flyer points for watching this commercial?
That’s the reason i look for the red tail.

Well Jon,

I find the track disappointing and saccharine.

I kept waiting for it to ‘take off’ and ‘uplift’ me like a great Qantas jet take-off.

Sadly it left me looping like the friday night Melb/Syd waiting for a gate opening.

Apparently they used real life shareholders for the crying scenes.

The sentiment is nice but I buy airline tickets based on price and service and in my experience this rarely puts Qantas on my preferred list. I’ve not flown Qantas by choice for about a decade now – ever since a land hostess yelled at me when I could not self check in at Tullamarine. “Feels like home”… not so much, feels more like a pack of stressed staff taking their frustrations out on their customers, and given the news and financial results at Qantas I cannot imagine anything has changed.

Feels like another billion dollar loss to me. Awful advertising. Second shithouse, unbranded ad I’ve seen this week.

David Jones, now Qantas. Unbranded, useless advertising.

There’s a big difference between “doing advertising” and “getting people to buy your brands and products”.

This is the former. It’s a total waste of marketing dollars. It won’t sell a single flight.

@Dan Ilic – your comment won the internet.

Sickly sweet and laced with cliches. I’m surprised it wasn’t released the same day that Alan Joyce announced he had fixed everything and the airline was back in the black. No mention of sacking over 5,000 people to achieve it not to mention the knock-on effect to the severed relationships with a multitude of Australian companies resulting in further job losses.

Surly staff with a “I can’t help you…next” attitude quickly make you realise that this is the Qantas welcome home. That annoying cough that Qantas has with customer service is likely to be a chest infection and no amount of incredibly expensive sweet TV syrup is going to fix it

I always thought the task of a Brand campaign was to establish your position within the category?

Swap the staff uniforms and insert a different plane, and this ad could have been done by any airline in the world. Its the emotion of of travelling the world and coming home that is activated, not the emotion of anything particularly Qantas or Australian.

If the client needed to spend money on research finding out people are sad to end their adventures and happy to see loved ones when coming home, they are truly adrift. If there was something uniquely Qantas in those insights, the creative agency has wasted their money.

Brand message from QANTAS: We fly planes too.

Would have been great circa 1985. in 2014 it is a sad bunch of 1985 clichés from a couple of sad old retirees.

The strategy and filmed execution are spot on, but for me the soundtrack is poor, the particular style of female vocalist will date quickly and seems like an attempt to be youthful and contemporary. Perhaps they should have used the original Randy Newman version, which actually has much more of the feel of Peter Allen’s classic ISCAH, and has far more raw emotion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXP4UqgNg70

The main problem with this ad is the brand can’t back it up. If the actual product was even slightly satisfying this would be a classic.

If this is meant to be positiong Qantas at an organisational level then it feels very narrow…….so narrow it might fit more like a Xmas fly home with Qantas ad?

Assuming this is meant to work more broadely than that, I cannot work out how this helps the ailing Roo.

Australians (and I’m not one them) are an adventurous bunch who I suspect can see the big wide world out in front of them both domestically and internationally and want to get out there and flourish. I just can’t see them identifying with the whining homesickness of; It feels like home.

Then there’s the business segment……………..

People in tears from the beginning to the end of their trip on Qantas. Who would have thought?

As someone who lives on the other side of the world from the part of his (now extended) family that he grew up with, this does hit a nerve. Beyond price, smiles from staff and the food, this nails the emotion of leaving to see family – or indeed the angst of leaving it – very melancholy. Nice work, Neil.

As an expat, this one definitely tugs on the heart strings, particularly at this time of the year. A great piece that had me in tears thinking of going home soon and would work wonders in getting people to book their xmas flights with QANTAS…if it was a month ago – anyone who is flying home for xmas would have already booked their flights by now.

Then there is the point that the video is geo-locked and when I tried to watch it from Singapore I got the message “this video is not available in your country”. If it’s appealing to Australians abroad, maybe enable them to actually watch the film?

There is little positivity in the execution. The emotion is sad – not happy. I’m not sure it lands what it’s trying too.

At least the old home work made you feel good, dated as it is.

Qantas needs to do stuff, not bang on about it. As the comments above make my point for me – the audience isn’t ready to be told what to think, they need to get half way there themselves.

Neil great to hear your perspective.

I was a young exec at M&C when that campaign was made and I remember Graham and Oli showing me the offlines.

To my memory, stunning 45sec one shot commercials with no cuts. I recall a young woman on a ferry in New York lamenting about the green and gold ferry’s bobbing in Sydney harbour.

That work was beautiful, as is this from Neil Lawrence.

But both are a long way from the raw power of the choir singing ISCAH.

Would be nice if people were somewhat objective, and didn’t jump on the Qantas bashing bandwagon.

I think the spot perfectly matches the brief. Miles better than Virgin’s recycled ad as well as Qantas’ last brand ad in 2012.

My only thinking is that they need to do another spot in parallel that focuses on their products and services. Those who have stopped flying them need to be told what they’re missing out on

I’m an Aussie living overseas.

Tried to watch the ad. Not available in my country.

Guess I’ll fly Emirates, then.

On a serious note. Qantas are now just a sucky, overpriced airline with terrible customer service and an awful overall ‘experience’. I mean, they make you pay to preselect seats on your $2,500 ticket when Emirates—on the same route—let you do it for free on a ticket that simply costs less.

Make warm and fluffy ads all you want. Qantas is an irrelevant, almost-budget airline now.

Dan Illic, yep that comment wins.
Production values etc are all there. But it’s just been done so many times before. I’d expect more from a brand this huge.

Whatever you think of the ad campaign, it’s like putting a new frock on a damaged body.

Qantas’ problems lie in their mistreatment of Frequent Flyers, whose loyalty has been repaid by slaps in the face for the past decade.

When you treat customers with disrespect, they move away.
It’s really a very simple formula, and equally simple to fix.
But no – Qantas will go down in flames before they admit that mistake.

Mr Illic, you win.

Beautifully shot, well done. Song, the cutsie, folk style… Not so much.

I think that Q management could combine the soft campaign approach and use this as a spring board announcing vast sweeping changes to how they will do things. Real change in brand at every touch point.

Build momentum.

Nailed it. Well done. So good to see a big brand getting lost and then finding its way home.

Seems like anyone will jump on the Qantas bashing bandwagon these days. The good old tall poppy syndrome.

You choose to fly Emirates or any other competitor based on price and then ask why the Red Roo is having a tough time? Instead of complaining about how the airline is struggling and losing money support an Australian icon and fly Qantas instead of being negative about everything they do.

The ad that pulls at the heartstrings, not ground breaking but appropriate, sure would have been great for a bit more upbeat soundtrack but it works.

If someone has any better ideas out there, go ahead, make a pitch!

Well Done QF!

I’d prefer to spend my corporate travel dollars on Qantas. But until they manage to build a business class seat that actually goes properly flat they won’t get my money.

Simply astonishing that Qantas have never been able to get this right.

ps – “ferries”

I flew with QANTAS on Thursday to Melbourne (I usually fly Virgin, however in a very rare case this particular QANTAS flight was much, much cheaper, so I booked). My ticket said ‘breakfast’, so I waited to eat on the plane. Breakfast was a yoghurt with more sugar in it than a can of coke. A quarter of a muesli bar and a small bag of dried cranberries? Breakfast? Is it too risky to buy perishables? Natural yoghurt, a real banana and perhaps a croissant, would have been much better.

I would describe QANTAS as bland.

Air New Zealand have the in flight experience trim and fun and their staff seem genuinely happy to have you on board.

The Qantas singing choir campaign was as un-Australian as you can get. Lining kids up, to attention,all dressed in white is more like a North Korean propaganda newsreel. Totally out of touch with the Australian values of relaxed, fun loving, colorful and honest. They should have added a “muck-up” shot to the last few secounds. That ad was about the brilliant song sung by fresh young faces – so powerful even that crap choice of vision couldn’t ruin it.