Qantas is one of Australia’s largest domestic and international airline companies acclaiming recognition as the world leader in long distance airline and Australia’s strongest brands. With a fleet size of 118, it covers across 85 destinations throughout the entire globe (Qantas.com 2017).
Its foundation lies back in November 1920 by three individuals, with fragile biplanes capable of carrying only two persons at a time. Addition of Arthur Baird in the organization took Qantas to the heights of engineering excellence. Now the Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Ltd (QANTAS) provide the service of colossal Airbus A380 that is formidable in carrying about 450 passengers at a time. It also happens to be the third oldest airline companies after KLM and Avianca. The company is also one of the founding members of Oneworld airline alliance (Moriarty et al 2014).
This airline company bases in Mascot, suburban vicinity in Sydney along with its prime hubs located in Sydney Airport. Qantas presently dominates the market with about 65% of domestic shares in Australia and around 15 percent of the population uses this airline service annually. Qantas also holds the ownership of other airline services such as Jetstar along with an array of subsidiaries. Qantas presently employs over 30,000 individuals under the leadership of Leigh Clifford, of which only 7% belong from abroad nations. Its current CEO is Alan Joyce.
Public relationships are a strategically planned procedure of communication that creates a formal yet mutually favourable relationship between the organization and the common people. Experts refer to it as simple and straightforward solution to maintain a company’s image in the public eye as the public also includes key figures of the company such as the stakeholders. The motto of maintaining public relationships is to shed positive stories about the company itself (Fitch 2016).
Public relationships are often confused as advertising but in reality, it is quite the reverse of it. In case of advertising, the company usually pays an external medium like newspaper, television advertisement companies or the internet media to endorse its image. Yet in case of public relationship, those external mediums usually researches or shoots the company in a cinematic manner to gather information and make it available for the public.
Publicity is both cost effective and covers a greater expanse of audience compared to the procedure of advertising. Publicity is not necessarily free of cost, as it generally involves expenses of phone calls and mailings to the external media. However, the impact of publicity lasts longer than any kind of advertisement no matter how extravagant it may be. Moreover, maintaining public relationships offer greater prospects over advertisement as it inspires an idea in the mind of a common person that the company must be worthwhile if the media is covering the company rather than just advertising it for a short span of time (Motion, Heath and Leitch 2015). In other words, it is more believable than advertising as it does not concentrate on boosting sales rather propagate brand loyalty among the public.
Public relations campaign is a scientific approach to convey a strategically designed message meant for a target audience, in order to counter any negative circumstances that have affected the organization in the past as a response. These campaigns involve several entities from the public scenario such as:
Moreover, these campaigns also focus on renewing the reputation & creating awareness, educating and informing the public of any issues that misleads or misinterprets the company’s value and image publicly (Fournier 2014).
During 2011, Qantas airline grounded its numerous fleets as a response to industrial disputes with union. The airline company contended with both of its ground staff and flight staff along with the engineers over salary hikes, work conditions and outsourcing jobs abroad. As a rebound to staff resistance, CEO Alan Joyce declared locking out the staff on 29 Oct 2011 resulting total 108 aircrafts to be grounded across the globe. The disruption of the airline service caused cancellation of more than 600 flights and left almost 70,000 national and international passengers marooned across the globe. The CEO regretted the decision but stood strong against the union’s pleas. He commented, “They must decide just how badly they want to hurt Qantas, their members …and the travelling public”
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Strengths |
Weakness |
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· leaders in the domestic market · one of the largest long distance airline service in the world · covers 85 destinations across the world · colossal brand value |
· excess concentration in Australia-Asia · High rate of employee retention · long route flights are often delayed due to weather conditions |
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Opportunities |
Threats |
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· Probability of higher growth through tie ups with international airlines · penetration in international markets · Cost effective ticket pricing and services to the passengers for better travelling experience. |
· fluctuating fuel prices · Crushing rate of competition in the international market · The company was proven guilty of price fixing in 2006 costing a fine of a huge amount of money. If the situation like this resurfaces, the reputation of the company may take a great blow. |
The manager will need to identify the key challenges and obstacles that the company will face in this circumstances (Choi 2015). For assistance in the development of the campaign, the manager devices a plan to cover the significant factors involved in the strategic planning of public relations campaign. The course of action in this planning involves:
This phase includes analysis of the problems in the current scenario along with the internal situation of the organization. This phase also aligns and analysing the public through investigation of various demographics, psychometrics test and attitude of the general mass towards the organization
Setting the problem statements facilitates in recognising the correct audience as well as convey both the nature and of the problem along with its causes. The objective of setting the statement of the problem is to communicate those problems that can be addressed and potentially solved using the public relation tactics (Fitch 2016).
The problems include as follows:
After the setting the problem statement, the direction of campaign leads to formative investigation and research. The purpose of the research is not only to determine the target audience but to identify the problems that can be anticipated during the whole campaign. Along with that the motive of the research also centres on testing the effectiveness of the key message intended for the target public (Nitins and Burgess 2014).
The investigation involves information from various sources like literary researches, online database, demographics, personality preference and attitude of the public (Heath 2013).
This phase focuses on establishing goals and objectives of the entire campaign. In addition, this phase also deals with identifying target audience, formulating course of action and response strategies while enabling an effective communication medium for the both the organization and the target audience.
It is important for an organization to create a synopsis of it goals in order to achieve the in the first place. The goals of the PR campaign should be specified, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely (or also abbreviated as S.M.A.R.T.) (Ochieng 2014).
For this instance, the aim of the campaign is to renew the reputation of the company as well as to convey the message that Qantas has resumed its role as Australia’s top airline service, to the people, media and the company’s stakeholders. The tactical planning of the campaign will facilitate the success of this campaign.
The first and the foremost objective of this campaign claim renewal of the reputation of Qantas. The secondary objective involves spreading awareness in sceptical employees and ensuring them no further possibilities regarding the grounding situation
The campaign also serves to maintain the consistency of the brand image that Qantas has acquired across decades of flight services in Australian and international aerospace. The campaign also deals with involving the public through scheduling special events and expanding new flight destinations in the future (Sheffield-Brotherton 2015).
The campaign strongly intends on assuring the target audience that the company would not allow any deliberate future circumstances that will cause them any disruption in the service.
Target audience refers to all the individuals, groups or communities that influences and possesses decision making power over a particular product or services offered by a company. They are the people with whom the whole communication is supposed to be established. The target audience can be identified by determining the interested parties that are willing to uses your services or interested in covering your organization for research or investigative purpose (Tran Viet 2014).
The target audience comprises a multitude of segmentation. To make this division of the target audience more comprehensible the strategy is divided to two sections-primary audience and watchdog audience (Wan et al 2015).
Primary audience comprises-
Given their need for travelling on immediate reasons, these service consumers are more interested in availability of flight and destinations rather than the price of the tickets or the airline brand.
This segment however promises brand loyalty and is generally quite indifferent to the pricing. It is rather usual for the airline to arrange deals with large business organization as well as government figures on a contractual basis.
Further, watchdog audiences refer to the section of the society that is capable of control the flow of any kind information along with its expanse and interpretation (Dickenson 2016). This variety of audience includes segmentations as follows:
Tactics refer to one or more set of activities that facilitate the organization in achieving its PR objective. In this phase, tactics for communication, key messages and strategic plans are finalized. The implications to the tactics are to determine if the organization is able to interact with the right audience and whether the interaction makes a reliable impact. The tactics of this public relations communication looks forward to the awareness and action oriented objectives of the campaign (Economist.com 2017).
In this context, the organization aims to campaign for raising awareness renewal of its service, the tactic to be implied here is distributing a media release. The broadcasting media and publications relevant to the company and target audience will propagate the goal of securing an article about the renewed service. There are also tactical options that can also be including social media, blogs, email newsletters, public speaking engagement and sponsoring events (Austin and Pinkleton 2015).
The involvement of social media in the campaign is a very important factor responsible for the growth of the company. The media is always an essential part that reflects the image of the company in front of the public. The social media is responsible in framing the product into collaboration between the company and the customers. The social media adjusts the levels, provides an agenda in the entry of the gatekeepers, and supports the brand if anyone speaks against it. This company access to the media in order to project the desired product or services of the company and grabs the assurance of the media to help in the campaign (Newsom, Turk and Kruckeberg 2012). The recruitment of the company’s next services is also published with the help of media. The company seems to arrange a press release regarding the campaign and the aims of the campaign. The goal of the campaign is also to include the media to a large context with the advancement of the company’s out comings in the future days. The media will increase the awareness of the renewal of the desired services of the company. The media proves to be the latest media tactics that will woe the relation of the company and its passengers. The media will help in developing the communications of the company with its customers and help in managing the crisis of the company. This airline company is seen to be a very active part of the social media also. There is a analysing impact of the company in the social media (Smith 2013).
The key message that the company intends to convey is “Qantas is back in business”. This message is intended to reassure the public of company’s comeback in the business of airlines and its continuation of services in both domestic and international flights. Any deliberate discontinuation of services is made sure for never repeat as the company would be prepared with better contingency plans.
The approach of this campaign pursues the method of media release. Media releases are a great method for the purpose of dispersing new about the organization and garner publicity in the media. However, this method requires an extreme sense of responsibility and discretion for any representative of the organization that is to face the media for public speaking and questioning (Ahmad and Ismail 2015). Any misleading statement could result the exact reverse of the results that was originally anticipated for the purpose of the PR campaign. Media acts as a medium of connection between the organisation and customers. the media helps the company in building a positive impact for the customers. The media helps the company in launching the products and services and renders the positive agendas of the company to the customers and encourages the customers to adapt the services of the company.
For representation on the behalf of the company, Andrew David (CEO domestic) and Gareth Evans (CEO International) of Qantas airline will lead the media release along with Kira Reed who is the senior adviser in Media, PR and Corporate Affairs at Qantas (Rinrattanakorn 2012).
This section of the campaign usually covers the aftermath and the follow up functions to assess the effectiveness of the whole process. The company has to employ means to assess whether the campaign has been successful or not in creating the desired image of the company. Research and survey can be undertaken to gather the experience, opinions and acceptance level of the people involved. There can also be a proposal to evaluate as to how successful the campaign has been in bringing about a change in the attitude of the people as far as the company was concerned. People can also be encouraged to give feedback through emails and online surveys (Stacks 2016). However, too much stress should not be given on electronic means, as they attract less supportive people are more of those who criticise and try to find faults with the company or its campaign. A media analysis should also be undertaken, and it should consider whether the campaign has covered the issue or not, with consideration regarding the target audience, the key messages implied, and the positivity and accuracy of the conveyed message (Rice and Atkin 2012). Success can also be evaluated after the campaign by looking at the sales figures, behavioural changes and enquiries. The evaluation of website hits is one that gives an insight into the reaction of the customer with regard to the client. A hotline number or a customer care number could also be arranged for to assess and evaluate the feedback of the customers.
Conclusion
Renewing the reputation of Qantas in the aftermath of the unwanted decision of locking out employees as response to salary hiking will not be an easy task as most anticipate. The loyalty of the users of the airline service is visibly as shaken as its stakeholders. The passengers are doubtful in case if the same scenario is ever to happen again. Nevertheless through the strategically planned public relationship campaign, the company aims to reassure both its current and future passengers that Qantas is now available for their service and will not let any similar circumstances happen in the future of the company. If any situation arises the company will be ready with contingency plans prepared by its team of executives and management.
This campaign approaches media release as its core idea. The target audiences comprise mostly of travellers in both domestic and international waters, but the most of its user belong from the segment of the business travellers. Although they rely on our service on a contractual basis but upsetting either them or any other kind of service user is not is not advisable.
The public relations campaign that is outlined will help in creating and maintaining an image of the company which would be profitable for them in the long run. Also, the company and its representatives should be ready to argue and substantiate its strategies and tactics when attacked by the critics. The main aim of the PR campaign is to add value and contribute to the goals of the organisation. It is also important that the success is evaluated to estimate the effectiveness and success of the PR campaign. The quality and quantity – both these aspects are to be evaluated in every way.
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