‘You’re the reason we fly’ – A Hit or Miss?
You’re the reason we fly – A Hit or Miss?
Yesterday, after much anticipation Qantas aired its first instalment to the ‘Your’re the reason we fly’ campaign on national television. The ad, led by
Publicis Mojo featured a new spin to the brand positioning statement, to modernise its appeal to the mass and put customers at the forefront of their campaign. In addition to this the campaign also aggressively underpins the positioning by changing its slogan from ‘Spirit of Australia’ to ‘Spirit of Australian’s’, in which Qantas describes as the tale of two letters.
The first notable element in the ad is the composition of the tune played in the background. The soundtrack titled ‘Atlas’ by Daniel Johns, devours a chilling and eerie state preparing the audience to witness something special, setting off an emotional state for viewers. Staying true to its positioning, the ad primarily displays Australian’s from the cities, countries and coast from the view of sitting in an A380 airbus aircraft, hovering over these destinations. The focal point of the ad is that real people (Australian’s) of all ages are collectively depicted as the one reason Qantas fly.
Amnesia, Razorfish and Adshel the marketing agencies that worked together with the Qantas Executive Marketing Manager, Lewis Pullen to create the first initial phase of the concept; generating a buzz to build up to the ad campaign by effectively integrating both offline and online mediums to achieve a mass effect and response. As Pullen describes it, “the most multi-channel, multi-dimensional campaigns ever launched in Australia”. Prior to the commercial release of the ad, Qantas had implemented an app that operated on an Adsheel screens in Sydney’s Town Hall stations that interconnected commuters mobile devices to have their picture and name featured on the screen. To this, Qantas had also cleverly crafted and utilised ‘
cause-related marketing’ for people to participate – that is a generous donation of $5 to Mission Australia, for each photo uploaded to the value amounting to $100,000. This philanthropy appeal is seen as the key driver for its unanticipated response rate. As a result the campaign saw more than 16,000 people download the app over a two week period, attracted over 60,000 entries, generating more than 200,000 unique visits to their website and raised $100,000 for Mission Australia in response to the first day of release of the campaign.
From an advertising perspective, the concept of putting customers at the forefront of their campaign is expressive and meaningful, however the message was executed poorly. Not to mention the stinkingly similar campaign previously adopted by
KLM – Royal Dutch Airlines Tile & Inspire and the
Share A Coke campaign. The campaign attempts to exploit an emotional appeal in reconnecting with its customers, rather than opting a rational and symbolic reason why customers fly, which is flawed thinking. Qantas fails to recognise that their customers are still displeased with their service; thus attempting to create emotive appeals without any improvement to the brand or service is puffery to consumer perception. A better alternative would be to reach its displeased customers on a rational level focusing on the fundamentals in re-establishing its service quality, reliability and responsiveness. As such the campaign fails to address the significant reason why ‘their customers fly’, instead stating that they are the reason Qantas fly. This ultimately shifts the focus and direction of the message, which no longer attempts to adopt a customer centric point of view.
On another level, nationalism of the brand was also overlooked in the ad. No attempts have been made to emphasise anything about the brand as an iconic and symbolic figure. Customers perceive the brand as Australia’s national carrier, which is the number one reason why customers choose Qantas.
The distinguishing red and white kangaroo logo is the most valuable asset and equity of the company yet ignores this critical standing point as a unique selling proposition; unlike its previous campaign ‘I Still Call Australia Home’ that resonated with Australian’s on a patriot and symbolic parallel. As a national flag carrier the purpose should have focused on the character of the nation in a collective state as one, rather than in an individual basis of the characters of Australians. With this in mind it can be argued whether any real value or substance for the brand was communicated?
In contrast, the use of social media prior to the commercial release of the ad was cleverly used in a way to fight back against the social media war against Qantas, which enabled negative content about the brand to be filtered out in favour of the buzz and digital media generated in the current campaign. However, this strategy will at best achieve short-term gain as overtime any marketing power inherited in the current ad will wear of and the voice of previously dissatisfied consumers will prevail in the digital space. As one marketer puts it:
‘People don’t care about what you say about your products. They want to know what other people say about your products and they care about experiences more than the product themselves’