Qantas CMO says it ‘makes sense’ to work with Tourism Australia once more
Qantas and Tourism Australia have described working together once more as “lovely”, telling a room full of travel marketers that strategically it “makes sense”.
Tully: “We’re definitely working more closely together”
The airline and the tourism body fell out in 2012 when Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce withdrew funding support for Tourism Australia, saying it was no longer possible to work with the organisation, claiming its then-chairman Geoff Dixon was among a group of investors committed to “unravelling Qantas’s structure and direction”.
Speaking at yesterday’s Travel Marketing Summit, Stephanie Tully, Qantas executive manager group brand and marketing/CMO, said: “We have work in the market in Japan together and we’ve got some other stuff planned. We’re absolutely working with Tourism Australia again which is lovely.”
The two reunited at the start of this year to work on Qantas’ new safety video, which also forms the the basis of a new tourism campaign for Tourism Australia.
Ronson: “Travel marketers need to focus on owned and earned channels”
Tourism Australia CMO, Lisa Ronson, said: “We recently worked together on Qantas’ great safety video, we’re doing some work in the Asian markets, we’re talking about other markets. Yes, we’ve worked with other airlines, but we’re definitely working more closely together.”
On why the two companies are now working together once more, Tully declined to go into the history, but said: “It makes sense for Tourism Australia and Qantas to work together, all Australians are better off for it, we’re happy with that.”
Ronson said the main challenge for travel marketers now is to focus on its owned and earned channels.
“The challenge for all of us is how do we rely less on paid media. We’ve been saying that for years, the challenge is to do it now and focus on our owned and earned channels and use paid media, not as a last resort, but to think through some of those other channels first before we just jump to paid media.
“If we can achieve that nirvana, the way we spend our money and how we allocate our budgets will fundamentally change but do I think that’s going to change in the next 12 months? Probably not.”
Behre: “We’ve got to start telling the right sequential story to a customer”
For Amanda Behre, Wotif director of brand and marketing, who joined Ronson and Tully on the panel, said the industry needs to start thinking of advertising as a service.
“I don’t think as an industry we do mobile marketing extremely well. We need to start thinking about advertising more as a service and being able to talk to people as they go through their journey.
“If we know a little bit about our audience, we might know they booked a trip to New Zealand, we need to be making sure we’re serving them the right content. Don’t remarket them another trip to New Zealand, we know they’re travelling in five days time, have you booked your travel insurance? Here are the top five experiences in Auckland. We’ve got to start telling the right sequential story to a customer.”
Miranda Ward
Miranda Ward worked for Mumbrella from 2013 to 2017, eventually becoming deputy editor. Miranda joined Mumbrella in September 2013 from Sky News.
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