Airline Uses Guerilla Tactics
8 June 1997You could almost imagine the backstage drilling Qantas management gave a selection of Australia's Olympic heroes yesterday: "Whatever you do, don't bring up the Olympics."
Qantas - not an Olympic sponsor - had gathered the cream of Australian sport - including Olympians Kieren Perkins, Samantha Riley, Daniel Kowalski and Michael Murphy - to help launch the airline's latest ad campaign, in which they all star. But there was one condition: don't talk about the Olympics, which made most of them famous and built their careers as hot sponsorship properties.
While the Qantas commercial director, Mr Geoff Dixon, denied it was ambush marketing, there was no doubt the airline's move got up the nose of Ansett, Sydney 2000's official aviation sponsor. An Ansett spokeswoman, Ms Jane Corbett-Jones, said: "Qantas will need to recruit more than 40 athletes if its ads are to reflect the new generation of Sydney 2000 athletes, most of whom are not nationally recognised as yet. "In the meantime, Ansett, as the official Games sponsor, is totally committed to working closely with our Team Millennium partners to ensure the successful staging of the event and that the benefits are passed on to all Australians."
Ansett has paid an estimated $40 million for the legal right to promote itself as a Games sponsor and use the Olympic wording and imagery of the 2000 Games. But that has not stopped Qantas picking 40 top athletes, half of them Olympians, to promote itself as a good sport in the lead-up to the Games. Its campaign is being run by John Singleton Advertising.
Qantas cannot break the law by using Sydney Olympics imagery or references, but the law does not stop individual athletes talking about past Olympic efforts. The Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games media manager, Ms Tracey Holmes, said: "It doesn't look like Qantas has overstepped the mark." She added: "Those athletes have chosen to do this. In certain respects it's a decision which may be limiting for them, especially when you consider the advantages official sponsors have with the freedom to use their Olympic association in marketing strategies." This did not seem to worry Mr Dixon yesterday, especially when asked why the airline was not a Sydney 2000 sponsor. "They were asking too much money and we didn't want to be involved."
