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Qantas: PR activity will ramp up once our customers are back in the air

The Qantas in-house PR team is to attempt to get back on the front foot as the airline attempts to move on from the weekend’s fleet grounding.

A spokeswoman for the embattled airline told Mumbrella: “We’re dealing with the media enquiries to give the most up-to-date information regarding the grounding of the aircraft. Once we move past this initial phase we’ll certainly be increasing our proactive PR projects.  

“Whenever we have an incident we increase our PR activity working with our marketing teams and commercial teams and other areas around the business. We have got a number of upcoming activities planned.”

“At the moment, the focus is getting our customers on planes. There will obviously be a campaign going forward.”

Qantas has said public relations will remain with the in-house team, with no plans to involve a PR or crisis management agency.

David Van of The De Wintern Group, a crisis management firm, told Mumbrella: “Sometimes business or legal matters must take precedence over public relations. This seems to have been the case this week.

“The challenge for Qantas now is to create a structured reputation remediation program, and their corporate communications team should expect, and get, the full weight of management support behind their efforts,” he said.

Meanwhile, a Qantas spokesperson told The Australian today that “customers could expect a marketing campaign soon.” The newspaper suggested that Qantas would launch a multi-million-dollar PR and marketing campaign to restore the airline’s image.

In a statement, Qantas said: “Our roster of agencies have been working on regular retail activities. These are not a response to the industrial action. Following the grounding of the airline over the weekend and the subsequent disrupt to our passengers we are now looking at customer care recovery strategies to re-engage and reward our loyal customers.”

Qantas is currently holding a review of its creative and media roster with M&C Saatchi, Publicis Mojo and Ogilvy in the running for the creative business.

Yesterday, James Wright, GM of Red Agency told Mumbrella that the Qantas brand “would never be the same again”.

The Qantas crisis will be dissected in The Gruen Planet’s ‘crisis management’ segment on Wednesday night’s episode on ABC1.

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