Did someone chop the roo's head off?

I've always known Qantas as the "Spirit of Australia", and I've always liked the endless (albeit monotonous at times) variety of "I still call Australia home" adverts they can come up with. The recent change in marketing campaign however, leaves me doing nothing but shake my head.

The campaign starting in July, focuses on a new tagline. "Spirit of Australians", with "the tale of two letters." Two letters... they hope can change the fate of Qantas. I thought this would make a nice new change to Qantas, I agree on the underlying marketing lingo explaining the change. 

I actually thought it was going to work... That was until I read a fellow blogger's article: Qantas rewords, rephrases, repositions...

This isn't a rebranding campaign, not a change of company slogan campaign, this is just... "adding" of two letters, add "n" and "s" to the "Spirit of Australia" on the left side of the aircraft to be "Spirit of Australians"... on TWO aircraft only !

In my eyes, his is a half-hearted attempt at regurgitating Ansett Australia's "Absolutely" campaign. Perhaps they were fearful that CEO Alan Joyce might scream at the bill of changing the writing at the whole of the right side of the aircraft? (Yes, even on just two aircraft!)

This sentiment is shared by fellow blogger, Kinny Cheng who runs UXmilk.com. Over the past week we've exchanged ideas, jokes, and criticism at this recent campaign. Whilst he has other (very witty) conclusion, mine is simply, half-hearted.

But the campaign doesn't just stop there! UXmilk ran another blog article which simply made me continue shaking my head. Qantas… is going to make me famous?

So, "Spirit of Australians" will put 2 extra letters on one side of two aircraft, add the names of 2 competition winners on those two aircraft, and the rest is (nothing more than) a testimonials campaign by Australians!

One newspaper quoted a very good phrase to describe this campaign. Qantas Marketing Manager Lewis Pullen has described the change as a "leap of faith".

One hell of a half-hearted leap of faith!

The little things that matter. Example #1: PLUNA

After writing "KLM and Social Media - How to really make a difference to your passengers", I thought I'd search around the web for stuff that can really turn around someone's travel experience. Competition, social media, internet, etc, all can reduce travel into a mere means to an end. Unless airlines try to do something to make a difference on the Passenger Experience end, air travel will be nothing more than a commodity.

So, let's go to a little known almost dead state owned airline that made an amazing turnaround by throwing away ego and pride... PLUNA. From political routes and losses, it has focused on providing what passengers want... or at least their version of what they think the passengers want, and a little further.

On December 31st 2010, this is what they did:

Flight 128 from Buenos Aires to Punta del Este, the last flight of the year, and

 PLUNA decided to give something to the passengers.

Nice? Sometimes, it's the little things that matter! Gotta love the body language expression on the passengers!