Historically, the Qantas brand has been built on a solid foundation with a mix of two things: safety and reliability, as well as being Australia’s friendly ambassador to the world. Qantas’ positioning on safety and reliability comes from its extraordinary track record, also famously plugged as the world’s best in the Oscar-winning movie Rain Man: “QANTAS…QANTAS never crashed”. Qantas’ long-standing ambassador role harks back to its first overseas passenger flight from Darwin to Singapore in 1935. Since then, it has consistently reinforced that status by stirring feelings of patriotism: the use of the Flying Kangaroo logo in 1947 and the ‘Spirit of Australia’ slogan, the use of emotive advertising featuring sweeping shots of iconic Australian tourist attractions, the co-branded marketing campaigns with Tourism Australia (more recently Oprah and John Travolta).

Today however, the Qantas brand operates in a significantly different landscape, which in turn raises questions about whether it can still rely on the same brand associations and positioning. Whilst safety and reliability are sine qua non for the airline industry, perhaps air travel has become so pervasive that amongst well-known brands, safety and reliability are assumed to be a given or must-have (as industrial psychologist Herzberg would term it ‘hygiene’ factor) and may no longer constitute a point of difference. Volvo and safety worked well for a while; but for Mercedes Benz, prestige and performance are its selling points because their customers who look for those things largely assume that they are also getting safety as a standard. Similarly, Singapore Airlines has been consistently profitable by positioning its unique service experience, not because it screams “safety and reliability” in its advertising.

Recent events may have also changed public perception of Qantas’ positioning on safety and reliability. Recurring grievances and industrial action by Qantas engineers and maintenance personnel may have created lingering concerns about aircraft operating fitness. Even if regulators ensure that unsafe aircrafts do not take off, what will delays and cancellations do to an airline’s reputation for reliability? A scan of social media revealed that there is substantial chatter voicing concerns about Qantas’ safety standards, and with the speed at which negative word-of-mouth spreads in social networks, every minor issue now would be magnified and widely disseminated.

Increasingly, Qantas may also be perceived to be less Australian in spirit. Recent negative publicity about exorbitant executive pay smacks of corporate greed of Wall Street proportions. The spirit of giving executives a 70% pay rise while outsourcing operations to Southeast Asia would be perceived as fairly un-Australian. In fact, concerns about safety, reliability, and outsourced are linked: a recent survey of investors and shareholders revealed that 55% believe that outsourcing is the cause of many of its midair incidents. One could see that it would be slightly hypocritical to continue to capitalise on feelings of national pride among local consumers when a company is moving operations offshore because it no longer wants to pay national-average wages to its local workers. It may only be a matter of time when it strikes passengers that an Irish-led, part-British-owned airline can only control Australian skies for so long….until the next viable option comes around.

The branding challenges for Qantas are not straightforward, yet not insurmountable. Two of Qantas’ brand pillars, which have served its domestic and international markets quite well thus far, are weakening and the airlines is left scrambling trying to reinforce the same brand pillars with band-aids and PR spin. The domestic market may be forgiving because we are Australians (and we really don’t have a choice), but the international market is much less so. How will Jetstar and Red Q compete in the already-competitive Asian market? What will their respective brand equities look like when it can no longer rely on the endorsement of a once-strong parent brand? Building brand equity requires insights about what will make the brand differentiable and sustainable.

Until now, that is. The European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research (ESOMAR) has just released their official “Guidelines on Social Media Research”, with the aim of guiding market researchers on what is considered ethical and professional in this field of study. The Guidelines cover internet-based platforms where users exchange information, such as online forums, discussions, communities, blogs, social networks (e.g. Facebook), video and photo sharing and group communication and/or collaboration platforms (e.g. Twitter).

Some of the key points covered by the Guidelines include:

-          Personal data collected in a market research project must not be used for any purpose other than the research project in question.

-          The research must comply with data privacy legislation for notice, consent, accuracy, security and access when personally identifiable data is collected and stored.

-          Research must also comply with the service owners’ terms of use.

-          Users’ co-operation must be based on adequate information about the research and their consent obtained when using personally identifiable data. If consent is not obtained, only depersonalised data may be used.

-          Researchers interacting directly with users of social media must convey their contact details, purpose, and role, how they will use any data collected and seek permission to do so.

-          When reporting research results from projects using social media, researchers need to explain the effects of using this source on the validity and reliability of results.

This formalisation of guidelines for appropriate use of social media for research is a vital step towards ensuring the market research industry as a whole acts with integrity and honesty in using this kind of data. Being a relatively new area for research, the guidelines help reduce the potential for mistakes or misunderstandings that could irreversibly damage the industry’s reputation in the eyes of the broader community; without which there would be no research participants.

Traditionally, a company’s online strategy included having a website as the foundation, where customers could obtain news and information about the company, their brands and products. This would also be paired with an internet marketing strategy which outlines how companies position their brands online using affiliate networks, brand placement on other sites, pay per click and search advertising. The pervasiveness of social media has seen companies rethink these traditional strategies to also incorporate social media in their online strategy. Having a social media strategy is about having a conversation with customers. Companies need to leverage relationships and networks to engage in open, and sometimes, raw feedback with end-customers. This will aid companies in identifying trends and finding out what customers really think, and importantly, monitor word-of-mouth. Ford Motor, PepsiCo, and Southwest Airlines, for instance, compile postings about themselves on sites such as Facebook and Twitter to estimate the immediate impact of their marketing campaigns and to understand how consumer sentiment about their brands is changing.

Social media has application both externally and internally as a means of communicating a company’s brand. Externally, social media allows companies to engage in timely and direct end-consumer contact at relatively low cost and at far greater efficiency than can be achieved with more traditional methods of communication. Proctor & Gamble developed the “Vocalpoint” network where customers share their experiences with using P&G’s new products. P&G believe that markets where Vocalpoint is active generates revenues twice that of those without it. Using social media will require new ways of thinking around how to engage with customers rather than “advertise” to them, but the potential gains are far greater. Dell, for example, uses Twitter by sending out short, text-based sales alerts to customers. The company estimates this alone has generated $1 million in extra revenue.

From an internal communications perspective, social media is also an attractive tool for employers looking to attract and retain the best people. Dow Chemical, for example, established its own social network to assist managers identify the talent they need to fill positions on projects across different business units and functions; this was even extended to include former employees. Furthermore, social media is an important platform for organisations to communicate their core values and vision. Employers can use social media to establish and enhance a two-way conversation with employees, who in turn can then understand better how they will fit into the company structure; a key component of employee engagement. Therefore, social media is tool that can also drive your employer brand and communicate your employer value proposition.

Research suggests that companies engaging in social media need to be proactive and understand why their people are saying the things they are saying; need to listen and be responsive; and lastly bring the conversation closer with the hope of establishing positive talk. Only by engaging in conversation with their customers and employees will companies establish that level of trust to ensure not only loyalty to the brand, but also customer repeat purchase and higher levels of employee engagement. Thereby creating a company’s most valuable asset, brand advocates.

So is social media a nice ‘to have’ or a ‘must have’ for organisations? As the uptake of social media tools increases, so do the studies to identify or validate their value and usage as effective communication tools. According to a recent study by Watson Wyatt, “social media tools are helping employees actively participate in creating and sharing information”. IBM also recently published a research paper titled “Motivations for Social Networking at Work” which indicated employees were motivated to engage in social media for three reasons:

• Caring – connecting on a social level with colleagues
• Climbing – the use of the employee social network helping people advance their careers
• Campaigning – used to help gain support for ideas and projects

An Economist Intelligence report concluded that employee social networks will become pervasive… it is not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’.

So where to do companies start? Our belief is that companies need to take small steps into the social media arena and identify tools that match their values and communication objectives. Basic ‘intranet 2.0’ tools such as internal wikis (a collaborative website which can be directly edited by anyone with access to it), blogs, and social network tools can be designed to help employees participate in company wide dialogue. This can result in:

• Faster distribution of information
• More effective communication to teams offsite
• More sharing of customer experience information
• Improved idea generation and promotion of innovative ideas
• Reduced office politics
• Improved company wide communication at all levels

From our experience, companies can utilise these tools to aid their company and employer branding initiatives. For example, success breeds success and social media provides an excellent medium for employees to collaborate on how the customer experience can be improved, or to share success stories on how the brand is lived and breathed throughout the organisation. Social media tools also provide a fast and furious way for employees to communicate when an organisation isn’t living up to its brand promises! So organisations beware… authenticity is the key.

The following video exemplifies how an organisation can integrate social media tools into their communication strategy. In the words of Best Buy, they are “getting set up for the next generation of employees” and have implemented some rather unique communication tools.

At the end of the day there needs to be a commercial tie back and for Best Buy it is using the insights, inputs and feedback to improve serving their customers and reinforcing their brand promise.