Singo blasts Qantas CEO Alan Joyce: “The marketing is wrong, its advertising is wrong and the persona of the company is wrong.”
September 7 2012, 3:18 pm | | 16 Comments
Larrikin adman John Singleton rained on Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce’s parade yesterday, claiming there was a ”crisis of management” at the national carrier on the day it unveiled a major alliance with Middle Eastern powerhouse Emirates Airlines.
Singleton said the low share price, poor marketing and international ratings, and combative industrial relations were evidence of management failings. He added that Mr Joyce was the wrong man for the job.
16 Comments
Wow, that was a pretty blunt assessment from John Singleton, though sadly the CEO’s desk is where the buck has to stop (as it does in other organisations.)
Hard to argue that the advertising is wrong, as the last Publicis effort was just about the worst major airline commercial of recent times, but sometimes companies have problems a lot deeper than brand communications.
Fixing the ads might not fix that.
It is many years since Singos opinion was any use or interest to anyone but him. This though may be a rare exception. QF makes a loss, Air New Zealand makes a profit. Rob Fyfe, the charismatic and effective CEO of Air NZ is leaving in December and he would make an excellent replacement for Joyce. But then so would my cat.
Yeah that ad was ridiculous – POV from aircraft flying at a few feet above ground. The people should be running for their lives thinking the jet’s about to smash in to them. Very strange.
Wow, the great Slingo has spoken, a blonde beer in hand.
There’s goes the share price of the Flying Roo.
Oops too late, already through the floor . . . not like the good old days when his business buddy Dixon was running the shop, taking tens of millions home in a pay packet, pressing the unions for cuts, and stiffing the shareholders on dividends, all while bringing home a share price that’s, hmmm right where it is today with his hand picked successor Joyce.
Curiouser and curiouser.
What’s an interesting point is the role of a CEO as the ambassador of the company. Joyce is very smart and probably a good businessman. But he suits an insurance company, not the spirit of Australia, Qantas. He’s a mathematician, not a marketer or a spruiker. No doubt the airline would be facing big challenges irrespective of the boss. However, Every time he appears in the media, I reckon he fucks the brand that little bit more. I wouldn’t be much better but I’m not pocketing the millions.
You’re right, Singo. 100%. The current qantas campaign is so cheesy. Where’ the confidence gone?
The advertising IS wrong. Agreed. Joyce IS a queer choice. Agreed. Who actually created that crap? I’ll say it again: IMHO it’s a borrowed line, with no internal brand truth; a pastiche of personalisation; and a Bunning’s TVC ending…
I can honestly say I’ve been guilty of disliking Singo’s ‘still call australia home’ in the past.
But when you’re sitting in Heathrow airport, tired and emotionally drained from all the ever-so-polite but downright nasty people in London and Europe, zombified by 2 years of shit weather, fed up of being called a convict by people you pay to get your coffee, and you hear that song, it’s like a big ray of homesick namby pamby I wanna go home and curl up and cry in the Australian sunshine smacking you in the face, making you want to drop everything and jump on QF1 straight to Sydney, no stopover, I’d rather spend 28 hours in airports than take an extra day.
Until you get back, then you start loudly reminiscing to your colleagues about how your agency in London would have made that ad so much better than the plonkers did here, the production values, budgets and opportunities are so much shitter than the ones on the single account you kind of looked after but not really back in London, and that great time you had in Spain when you shot that print ad for…
Fuck this site is full of dick heads. What a joke you people are.
Problems always have their antecedents way earlier than is immediately obvious. I don’t like Joyce but the current malaise could not be all his fault.
The music on the new TVC also completely wrong.
It’s the kind of music a film director would use to accompany a scene of a character having died and on his/her way to heaven.
For an airline, not good.
It always shits me whenever this dinosaur is called an ad guru in the press. He knows how to make money, but fuck all about creating good advertising. Singos was and still is a blight on advertising.
Dear Ridgey didge,
An american agency called Allen and Dorward San francisco created the “I still call australia home”: campaign for Qantas some 20 years ago.
have a nice day
Man, you nailed it. Brilliant, painfully true insight… you might have got the agency wrong but that sentiment was spot on.
No they didn’t Yankee Doodle Dandy. A&D created the ‘Koala’ campaign. ISCAH came out of Mojo. First TVC was shot by a Queensland director whose name escapes me.
Sing it to me sister!! The old bastards spot on.