Agencies talk integration, but few deliver. The Qantas pitch approach will uncover the truth ...
When French actor Gérard Depardieu was recently caught relieving himself on a flight mid-air as he sat in his seat, he wasn’t flying Qantas, but he might as well have been.
Qantas is copping enough damaging headlines to fill the luggage holds of the gigantic Boeing 787 Dreamliners the airline is set to take delivery of next year. As I write, The Daily Telegraph is reporting that Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce is employing home security following death threats amid an ugly union dispute.
Unsavoury headlines aside, the share price is on a downward trend as Qantas takes a beating in a bad economy. I was astonished to witness the roots of their distress first hand when I flew to Sydney from London almost eighteen months ago.
I purchased seats with extra leg room to accommodate my 6ft 6 frame, and as I strapped myself in for the long flight I was a bit miffed to find out that the cabin was less than half full. I was able to enjoy an entire row of empty seats to myself, and had no need to pay for an upgrade. The airline has been battling increased competition for years, especially from Emirates and Etihad, which are moving aggressively into the Australian market, in spite of falling passenger numbers across the industry.
All of this serves up a mouth-watering challenge for Australian agencies set to compete for the airline’s prized advertising account, which was put out to pitch last week as revealed by the AdNews website. Qantas executive marketing director, Lewis Pullen, explained that he is employing a five-stream approach across strategy and brand, digital, sponsorship and experiential, best-of-breed in international markets, and lastly, media. In theory, one above-the-line agency could bag four of the creative streams, with one agency responsible for handling media duties.
Pullen should be applauded for his ‘open’ approach, but is the appointment of one agency across four streams a likely scenario? I wouldn’t bet on it, and I suspect neither is Pullen nor his boss, Rob Gurney. The delivery of integration for clients seems to elude the majority of ad agencies. A number of them have attempted to evolve their offer to produce a more varied output than simply a TV ad, but when called upon to join up TV with digital, direct, other channels and sometimes even media, the integration rarely succeeds at a high level.
Pullen said last week: “It’s going to be really fascinating to see whether the full-service agency one-stop model can deliver that or whether you have to go to a much broader group of creative partners to deliver across all of those streams. It’s actually going to test the inherent structure of the agency market, I think. The outcome is going to be quite interesting for the industry as a whole.”
Reading between the lines of Pullen’s words, it’s hard to escape the nagging sense that integration is best handled by a client’s own internal framework, which Qantas has sketched out in conjunction with pitch consultant Enth Degree. By combining a suite of specialist agencies to sing from the same hymn sheet, the advertiser optimises their chances of achieving the best results.
Qantas is rapidly transforming its marketing approach into one of the most innovative in Australia. A recent ad, which sullied the Qantas red with a vibrant splash of pink, demonstrated a new appetite for bold, risky advertising. A Rugby World Cup branded content campaign still rolling out is edgy stuff. This latest move is commendable. It will be interesting to see in the coming months if the Australian market is up to the challenge.
This editorial column originally appeared in the October 7 edition of AdNews. Click here to subscribe.
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