Last year, BlueChip helped found Financial Narratives, a global agency network of independent financial services specialist marketing and communication firms. We are meeting for the first time in person in London, so I just flew Qantas on the iconic QF1. After Singapore, it hit me there wasn't a single Australian accent on the crew other than the pilot. I'm not a brand person, and I'm not usually sentimental about businesses, but it made me sad. It didn't feel like home anymore.
Does this just depend on your angle?
Coming into Sydney, Crown's tower at Barangaroo is genuinely beautiful. From the airport, my eyes swept from right to left, landing on the tallest, shinest and newest thing in the city. It looks perfect, and completes the skyline. From the ground, all I see is a casino (fail), with a terrible governance record (fatal fail). Same building, but very different from different angles.
Qantas is the same trick. Stand with shareholders, and Alan Joyce turned an airline with a cost base Qantas itself spent a decade calling uncompetitive into one of the most profitable in its history. Stand with staff, and you see the outsourcing, the 1,700 illegally sacked ground crew, and last week's strike. Stand with Joe Aston, who, before he was the most feared columnist in the country, was a Qantas speechwriter, and Joyce is the antichrist. That's not a bias that discredits his book The Chairman's Lounge, but it does help explain his unrelenting pursuit.
The problem is when there's shade from every angle
A crisis manager once advised me, as I took the job of Head of External Communication at an ASX company where the CEO and chair were brawling in public, that "...there are no angels here."
IMO that's where Qantas has landed. Not because the perspectives disagree, they always do, but because customers stopped caring about any of it the moment the product broke. Cancellations, lost bags, a cr@ppy app, delays etc. We were fine with the strategy right up until we weren't fine with the service.
Reputation isn't the view from the boardroom or the union hall. It's both what the person standing closest to you actually experienced, and all the reputations you have earned with all the stakeholders
A brand has to make us feel something, or it's just a price
The other thing I noticed on that flight: the passengers were almost all Australian. Not because it's the best product on the route. It plainly isn't. But perhaps we still fly with the "national carrier" because it still, just, feels like ours. And more importantly, we are loyalty hostages, given some 19 million of us have a Frequent Flyer account. That's the real asset, and it's why Qantas could drop the ball on service for two years and keep the planes full.
Loyalty programs buy forgiveness, not affection. The day the feeling goes, all that's left is a points balance that can be matched.
I'll say this because it's true and because it's rare, after all these years. I'm proud of the brands we represent. I feel good about it. Your consultants feel good about working with you. That feeling turns into better work. So keep being a good brand, and good people to us. It's not the soft stuff. It's loyalty, and it's often what helps you keep winning.
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