Two minutes to read, a few more to think
I was recently on a Qantas flight from Sydney to Melbourne. As most of you will know, it isn’t a long trip - only about 90 minutes at most (depending on time of day).
Not wanting to waste the opportunity to think without interruptions, I put my iPod headphones in my ears and started playing some easy listening tracks. As I let my mind wander, I also let my eyes move around the cabin. Some of the images on the cabin TV screen caught my attention.
What I saw was the Qantas general entertainment programme and I (mildly) amused myself by trying to guess the story without listening to the sound. I did notice that the various reports were split into 4 basic categories – business, sport, politics and the arts. The most interesting thing was that about 50% of the reports were on the various Arts.
This grabbed my attention.
So I looked a little harder…
…and I started to see a very considerable commitment to branding Qantas in alliance with artistic endeavours. I saw links to opera, orchestral music, modern dance, classical dance, literature and choral singing.
So what images did I see around me? The tagline of “Sharing the Spirit”, the Sydney Dance Company, the Australian Ballet, Cathy Freeman at a book reading, “A Spirit of a Community”, the Australian Girls Choir & National Boys Choir, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Canteen, Pathfinders, and even the onboard magazine On:Q (on cue).
(When I later checked the Qantas website I saw they support no less than 15 artistic organisations, 3 major sporting bodies and over 30 charitable and community organisations.)
I’m not a shareholder, employee, relative of an employee, or a consultant to Qantas – simply a fare-paying passenger. And they don’t know I am writing about them.
So why am I making a song and dance about what they are doing?
Because these are things that are directly linked to the soul or spirit of Qantas’s customers. This is incredibly powerful! In this way they are making an emotional bond with their customers that is almost impossible to break – even I suspect, if planes were to fall from the sky!
They are marketing an experience and an emotion, even if only by association.
How many marketing texts have told us that buying decisions are made with emotion and only backed up by logic?
What emotions were triggered in you when you first heard the “I Still Call Australia Home” commercial sung by those wonderful Australian children? (If by some chance you haven’t seen it, go to http://www.qantas.com.au/travel/airlines/i-still-call-australia-home/global/en)
Is it all just a cynical ploy by some unscrupulous advertising executives within Qantas? I don’t think so. There is far too much that Qantas is doing in their Sharing the Spirit Community Initiatives that demonstrates a real commitment to people, the environment, the arts, indigenous Australians, youth, sport and charity.
I especially like the Spirit of Youth Awards which aim to celebrate and reward young Australian creative talent in film and animation, fashion, industrial and object design, music, photography, visual arts and visual communication.
Very few of us have the deep pockets of Qantas, but we can all do something, according to our means, to make a contribution to our community. And along the way we can also benefit from the emotional connection this will allow us to form with our stakeholders, both internal and external. And this has been demonstrated to have a direct bottom-line benefit.
