S2 I EP.13 "The Worst Rebrand Ever" I Cemoh Fractional Marketing Podcast

Simon Dell (00:01)

Welcome to the CEMO podcast. We have a very different format today, but before we dive into that, I'm just going to do the usual quick introductions. My name is Simon Dell. I'm the CEO of CEMO. We are the world's largest fractional marketing network. We may not be the world's largest fraction marketing network, but fuck it, who's going to argue with me? So that's what I'm going to claim. ⁓ If you want to find out more about us, cemo.com, c-e-m-o-h.com, if this is the first time you're hearing us. ⁓

Gus Wurth (00:23)

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Simon Dell (00:30)

you like this podcast, then please rate and review us on Apple, iTunes, Spotify, Deezer, wherever you happen to be listening to this. ⁓ And finally, if you want to get in contact with me, I am on LinkedIn, pretty easy to find. There's another Simon Dell out there who takes nature photos. That is not me. Just don't confuse the two of us. But today we're going to do a slightly different format. rather than the usual, me asking some questions and somebody

answering it. We thought we'd try and do a bit of a debate and then before we talk about the subject of the debate let's introduce the two, ⁓ second, the second and third middle-aging white men with opinions for this podcast. ⁓ Somewhere down in Sydney is Josh Salento, welcome back who has been on before. Give us a little everyone a little bit of your background Josh.

Joshua Cilento (01:26)

started in rock and roll that became film and television production that became agency that became people calling me and saying I've got a problem with my business I don't know what that is I need you to find it and need you to fix it and then Simon told me that that's what a fractional CMO is

Simon Dell (01:44)

I'd never forget you turning around saying to me. that's what I've been doing for all these years. So there we go So he didn't have a label and now he has a label And but up on the I believe Sunshine Coast on you Gus. Yeah up on the Sunshine. Gus worth Gus Tell us the tell us the Gus worth story

Gus Wurth (01:49)

you

The gusts were, well, look, given we're making outlandish claims like you did about CMO, I look regard myself as the world's best fractional CMO. No, look, I started an agency, Lansbury Ramone Agency for 12 years. I sold that in 2016. And since then, I have worked both client side and agency side predominantly in healthcare, ⁓ B2B, around the B2B healthcare space.

Simon Dell (02:07)

Ha

Wow, okay.

Gus Wurth (02:31)

⁓ and then for the last two years have ventured into the wonderful world of fractional CMO. And again, like Josh, really boils down to solving problems. And the same problems keep seem to coming up for businesses and solving those seems to be what we're good at.

Simon Dell (02:47)

Cool, cool, cool, cool. Now, when we decided to do this, one of the things that we wanted to create was some sort of like little debate structure. And one of the things that we were all very passionate about, I think all CMOs are very passionate about, are brands and everything that's associated in the brand sphere around them. So we decided to have a conversation about...

what we consider to be the worst rebrands of all time. And one of the things we discovered is that that's a fucking long list. ⁓ Some of them more recent than others, but there has been some doozies over the years. And the purpose of this session is for these two gentlemen to talk to us specifically about.

two rebrands in a particular industry. And then what we're hoping to get is some ⁓ commentary, suggestions, feedback, arguments from people who maybe watch this later on. So without much more of me rambling on, ⁓ the subject today is airlines.

And Josh, do you want to just give us your pitch about your airline and why it's probably deemed, in your opinion, the worst rebrand ever?

Joshua Cilento (04:14)

Now I've just realised that I'm positioning myself for some serious downgrades and getting kicked off flights as a probably 15 years dedicated Qantas flyer. This extensive and trickle rebrand of brand that's been occurring for Qantas over the last however long. ⁓

Gus Wurth (04:20)

Hahaha!

Joshua Cilento (04:43)

has been for me the most unsuccessful rebrand because it never really occurred. It also occurred, but it never had results, but it also had terrible results. mean, we're talking about 2019. went from the number one trusted brand down to in what's how many COVID years, six, seven years. We are at 71. It's gone from the top five trusted brands to the bottom five trusted brands. Now, if you're baseline for your rebrand,

Simon Dell (05:08)

Wow.

Joshua Cilento (05:13)

is that it does not get worse on the gap between your customer experience and what you're trying to tell them and the trust in your brand. If the baseline is that it stays there, that should be a failure. There's no uplift. We're talking about not a fall off, a cliff.

Simon Dell (05:32)

Yeah,

okay, that's a good opening pitch, Gus. Something a little bit further away from Australia for you, so tell us your opening pitch.

Gus Wurth (05:44)

That's right. So I'm doing the ill-fated rebrand of British Airways back in 1997, ⁓ a rebrand that failed so badly, it was in fact completely reversed 24 months later. The rebrand itself cost 60 million pounds, but the subsequent damage that happened through the, you can only describe it as botched rebrand, cost hundreds of millions of pounds more.

⁓ And so really, without going into too much detail now, this is a rebrand where they said, we're no longer a British national carrier. We don't want to be seen as that. We want to be seen as the global carrier. So someone, I'd say a very well-paid creative director decided that we would remove the Union Jack from the tail fin of the plane and replace it with no less than 34 different designs.

to represent all the different cultures that they flew to. So easy to remember, snappy across 34 different designs.

Simon Dell (06:48)

Okay, yeah, that was, it was a long time ago, but I think those that, those that are in marketing and have been in marketing a long time will remember that. ⁓ Okay, so that's two good opening pitches, that's two very well established and well known brands across the world. ⁓ And I guess what we're gonna do here now is, I'm probably gonna.

Gus Wurth (06:52)

It was.

Simon Dell (07:11)

In the nature of a debate, my job now is to then ask Gus a few more questions first, because Josh got to go first in the opening question. And I'm going to sort of throw those questions at Gus. That then gives Josh a bit of time to sit there and prepare his arguments and his pitch when I ask those questions. So I guess my first question for you, Gus, you mentioned they wanted to be, you know, re-presented as this global carrier.

Why bother? Was there something that you think was toxic about being just a British carrier? What was the strategic thinking behind that?

Gus Wurth (07:49)

Well, I'd like to start out by saying I don't think there was a lot of strategic thinking and that's why they ended up in this place in the first place. And really, it comes back to marketing fundamentals. Where was the market research? Why hadn't they identified that ⁓ the Union Jack was actually well loved? So the key was, ⁓ I think where they went wrong is they looked at your holiday travelers where a lot of revenue and holiday travelers genuinely did want a global airline.

Simon Dell (07:54)

Hahaha!

Gus Wurth (08:19)

but a huge amount of their revenue was from your corporate travelers flying across the pond, US and back. And it was those corporate travelers that particularly had an adverse reaction to ⁓ the removal of the Union Jack. So fundamentally, the fact that they ⁓ didn't do their market research, didn't understand that ⁓ the Union Jack was regarded as a position of prestige with business travelers. And by stripping that out,

Simon Dell (08:48)

Yeah.

Gus Wurth (08:49)

you know, they were losing a lot.

Simon Dell (08:51)

I'm going to challenge you on that one because I would go they didn't do their market research. My challenge would be that somebody sat around a table without some level of market research in front of them to pitch to the BA leadership.

my gut feeling because I wasn't in this industry back then was that there was some market research but maybe they asked the wrong questions and they asked the wrong people. Do you think that's possible as well?

Gus Wurth (09:21)

I think that's 100 % right. And that's sort what I was alluding to with perhaps their market research focused too much on the consumer travelers and not the business travelers, your holiday makers, and completely ignored that key and also my very profitable sector in the business travelers.

Simon Dell (09:30)

Okay. Yeah, yeah.

And ⁓ obviously, famously, there was a big competitor at the time that took massive advantage of that. Again, someone with a very strong brand as well. So do you want to sort of talk about that as well?

Gus Wurth (09:54)

Yeah, I we all know what our cheeky friend Richard Branson likes to get up to. ⁓ And of course, what would Virgin Atlantic do when they saw the ⁓ Union Jack removed? They became the British flag national carrier. So this was probably the most enduring damage. You can talk about the damage of taking the fleet out of action to be repainted. But when you talk about the fact that they lost that key positioning as the national flag carrier,

That to me is where the knife was really stuck in and twisted around on behalf of Branson.

Simon Dell (10:26)

Yeah.

And that's probably something you've just flagged there. ⁓ No, no pun intended. The, the, it was terrible. ⁓ the nobody, the nobody realizes is that there is a massive operational cost taking a plane out of circulation just to have its tail fin painted.

Gus Wurth (10:35)

That was terrible. ⁓

Huge.

Absolutely huge. So let's talk about the cost for a second. The cost of the rebrand. mean, remember we didn't just design one logo, we designed 34. So there was that rebrand was 64 million pounds. Remember we're talking about 1997 here. So there was that cost. There was the cost of taking each plane. I did the research, had to be taken out for approximately two weeks.

So you're talking about tens of millions of pounds in opportunity cost of not having those aircraft in the air. And then again, the biggest, I would argue, the expense or cost of all was that loss of brand equity across the flag. And ⁓ that's the one that's slightly harder to quantify in dollar terms, massive losses, massive errors. then those planes all had to be taken back out of service again two years later, because when the rebrand was reversed, they all had to be repainted again back to what they were.

Simon Dell (11:14)

Yep.

Gus Wurth (11:43)

It was, you know, the costs were massive.

Simon Dell (11:46)

It's interesting then you get two years into this failure. What's the conversation where you sort of.

You have to back down and go, need to go back to where we were because, I mean, obviously that's humiliating, you know, from a leadership perspective, but also whatever agency was involved or whatever brand people were involved. That just, that strikes me as end of career stuff for somebody.

Gus Wurth (12:17)

Yes, ⁓ there was a tipping point moment. there was, I'm not sure the context of, it was some sort of, ⁓ a bit like a press conference, Margaret Thatcher was there, there was a, it wasn't on this subject, but for whatever reason in the room, there was a British Airways model aircraft. And Margaret Thatcher being the strong nationalist that she was, picked up a handkerchief.

Simon Dell (12:21)

Yep.

Gus Wurth (12:42)

and just placed it over the tail of the aircraft and said, I don't like that new design, we shouldn't be running with that. And so that was the tipping point. That's when, and you can imagine the tabloid media in the UK and sort of what they did with that. And my understanding is that's when everyone sort of said, right, this has gone too far within BA, we need to reverse this. So I think the decision was made for them. I wouldn't have liked to have been around in the boardroom with some of the conversations that happened.

Simon Dell (12:49)

Yeah.

Yeah, that doesn't seem, yes, I can absolutely imagine. And I think at that point, mean, Thatcher was way past her, obviously, she's reaching the sort of ends of her political career, but still such an influence in the commercial space in the UK. Yeah. And I guess my last question to you in this sort of main section here is, do you feel that they've recovered?

Or do you think that that was permanent damage? And again, so, you know, we're talking 25 years later, where is BA now in terms of that brand?

Gus Wurth (13:50)

Yeah, look, I think they probably have recovered. I think if you were to do an unprompted brand ⁓ survey and ask travelers, business travelers, who is the British or if you were to who is the Union Jack national flag carrier, anecdotally, with the sample size of zero, Gus would say most people would probably pick it as British Airways. I know I would. So I think they have recovered from it. You know, the interesting thing is

I've been within companies where outside of my control, there has been ⁓ damage product issues, whatever issues where it's caused brand damage. It doesn't always reflect badly on revenue. Sometimes it can just create a whole lot of noise. Is there such thing as bad publicity? Absolutely. This was bad publicity. This was expensive. But I think it's worth noting as well that the general noise that can be made around a brand and that people hear around a brand can have a positive impact on revenue as well.

Simon Dell (14:33)

Yeah.

Gus Wurth (14:49)

To answer your question, yeah, I think they probably have recovered.

Simon Dell (14:52)

Yeah, okay. Josh, Qantas 2019 number one trusted brand in Australia. Can't get any better for them at that point.

Joshua Cilento (15:02)

Well, I mean, you can consolidate it and you can hold it by doing the right things with your ⁓ business. But, ⁓ you know, trying to move through just visual updates and leadership transitions and advertising campaigns to try and talk. But what are you doing, you know, when you've got ⁓

Philip, the guy that did the spirit of Australia publicly demanding the removal of it from the context of the, of the brand, because the difference between what you're doing and what you were saying you are is now a chasm. ⁓ So, you know, that rebrand, it's not a logo, just a logo change. I think that hopefully I can stay on.

BA and get upgrades still after this. The only BA flight I've ever taken as a non-code share or I've gone, there's that flight, think London, New York, LA.

I had an amazing trip and it's right about the time that that there the actual service on it, even though I think it was cheap because it was chaos. The service on that BA flight was amazing. I however have been on Qantas flights while they're talking about how incredible the service is and how this new world of what they're building and the rebrand and the refresh of that and this hugely singing on beaches with, you know, ⁓ slash November.

solo chopper loops around the top. this kind of warmth and empathy generated was nothing but ⁓ cold and soulless as the operational profit tried to move the business. You've got a business that is Jetstar, which is your budget carrier, which you can rely on. All of the other models around the world which do that really well. You've got Ryan wanting to have

Simon Dell (16:49)

Yeah.

Joshua Cilento (17:06)

people standing up and pay for the toilet. That's what that airline is. Don't try and make those profits with your premium brand.

Simon Dell (17:17)

Yeah.

Joshua Cilento (17:17)

and you know your haute couture and you're ready to wear don't get them confused by trying to sell them in a low price department store that's not what they're for keep them separate and then that communication of that it just it got lost ⁓ but also the talking about not

who they actually were. ⁓ And I think that that success comes from when an audience believes you and the rate at which the fall has come, I think is related to a trust in whatever is being said about rebrand, about anything, whatever we do, we no longer absorb or accept that. And that has created a critical mass that continues to go down.

Simon Dell (18:07)

I can't help feeling that Qantas somehow, in the timeframe that you're talking about, were subjected to a lot of outside forces that maybe have conspired to accelerate the brand fall of those kinds of things because of COVID hitting in 2020. Obviously we can talk about COVID in a brand sense.

for many different brands, but Qantas seemed to deal with it particularly badly in my opinion. Do you think that's the case?

Joshua Cilento (18:49)

Yeah, I don't think you could have dealt with it worse. mean, everybody else is taking punches and taking the hits. It's a global pandemic. doesn't matter. ⁓

what the external forces, the entire market is feeling those external forces. If you take action by 2023 that's determined that you've illegally fired 1700 of your people, the core, and your brand is the spirit of Australia, you're doing it wrong.

I get that there is going to be ⁓ that push for the shareholder. But again, when you say Spirit of Australia, we're all shareholders in that. We might get a financial dividend. And because the entire world is burning and on fire, that dividend might be slightly lower, but we don't lose the value of our brand. takes years and years and years to go in the consumers.

head

from this is the safest airline in the world. This is the most trusted airline in the world. I believe in this. don't, there's turbulence. I don't even get, you falls off in a heartbeat if you continue to do it wrong. ⁓ And my best friend who swears like a sailor, ⁓

uses it more brutally in, know, it wasn't a bad idea. No, it was done by dumb-dums. It's a dumb-dumb thing to do. It was dumb. How you handled it, what you did, how you re-handled, how it was handled and reacted to was very top-heavy, very CEO-driven, you know, I'm on $20 million, but...

you guys are going to have to suck this one up for me. think it was canary in the coal mine for what's currently going on now with healthcare and all kinds of different things.

Simon Dell (20:54)

It's interesting that you say there seems to be this ⁓ similar to what happened at British Airways that this is a CEO led, that these are CEO led decisions. These are, you know, presumably smart people in, you know, in charge of these things. Yeah.

Joshua Cilento (21:10)

They're smart people. Don't

make the mistake of thinking that they are dumb people. They are smart people doing dumb things for more money, which is short-sighted in the loss of the brand value of what they are diminishing and tarnishing returns over time. The only value and variable in there that's not included in that calculation of the smart person is time and loss.

Simon Dell (21:17)

Yeah.

Joshua Cilento (21:38)

What you lose from that, again, like the flags, the down cycle of your planes not doing what they should be doing, two weeks to paint a flag, 15 years until people believe again.

Simon Dell (21:51)

Yeah, yeah, okay. Look, we're gonna sort of wrap this one up now. I've kind of got my own thoughts as to which one I think was done the worst or the best. But what I'm gonna say is I'm gonna ask you both your opinions on the other rebrands. So Gus, you've heard Josh's comments on Qantas. Why is Qantas's branding rebranding session?

not as bad as British Airways was.

Gus Wurth (22:24)

I think it's been a very slow burn for Qantas over time. It hasn't just fallen off a cliff overnight. my personal experience flying Qantas, and this is me wanting to make sure that I continue to be in the running for an upgrade, is that that service level ⁓ in terms of the hard product and the soft product, so that the aircraft, the seats.

the service in the plane hasn't deteriorated hugely for me. So I don't discredit what Josh has said around some of the poor handling and treatment of the staff and the contractors and the legal cases and IR issues that happened there and the degradation on the spirit of Australia. But the ⁓ distinction for me, personally traveling between the hard product, the soft product and the brand itself hasn't overly

⁓ deteriorated and I still sort know what they stand for, whereas British Airways, I don't know what they stand for. Sorry, at the time, even though I was just getting out of high school, I didn't know what they stood for and it was very, very costly.

Simon Dell (23:29)

Yeah. Okay. Fair point. Fair point. Josh, I'll give you that right to reply then. Why do you think yours was worse than the Qantas one was worse than the British Airways one?

Joshua Cilento (23:39)

I'm going help Gus because I

think that the rebrand was worse than the BA one. think the BA one was a rebrand done wrong. I think the Qantas one was the bleed through of systemic operational and poor economic decisions from the business coming through a papered over.

⁓ pastiche solution to try and make it look like those cracks weren't occurring in the business. ⁓ It's not a rebrand, it's a fail of hiding what is going on and trying to make it look like something else. The A got it wrong in their brand and their rebrand. Quinas couldn't hide with a fulbright rebrand what was actually occurring.

Simon Dell (24:31)

Yep.

Yeah,

yeah. Look, two very good arguments and considering this is the first time we've done this, I think we sound extremely eloquent and educated. Hopefully we can carry that through to future episodes. ⁓ From my perspective, ⁓ look, I wasn't quite as young as Gus in the time of BA's ⁓ rebrand.

and obviously being born and bred in the UK, was the BA brand was... You were actually almost proud of that brand. There was a sense of pride and I suspect the sense of pride was the same with Qantas here in Australia as you were growing up. I remember once getting on a flight to Australia, so this would have been early 2000s.

getting on a flight to Australia on Christmas Day because it was the cheapest flight that we could find. We wanted to come and see my wife at the time's family. We've gone on this flight.

And bizarrely, we got upgraded to first class. So that was still when they had a first class. We were in coach and I don't know how this had ever happened, but we got upgraded to first class. Just the most amazing experience I'd ever had on a plane and makes you not want to fly any, you know, any other way ever again. and that's always, that's that memory for me has always been there for the past 25 years of that's what British Airways was. It's that level of service, that exquisite.

looking after you, you know, that's still in my head. But I also then see from Josh's perspective and your comments that I feel that...

It's almost I feel that the Qantas brand was undermined from below, from underneath and underneath up, whereas potentially the BA brand was potentially undermined from top down, which is a very generalized comment, but I think that's to me the difference that I've heard from you guys today. closing comment, closing a couple of sentences from you, Josh.

Joshua Cilento (26:47)

⁓ One coming from the bottom, one coming from the top. ⁓ The question is who has taken longer and who will take longer to recover from, regardless of the severity of the rebrand issue, what damage was done and who will take the longest. love, know, I'm...

I feel very, very comfortable on BA and when I get Qantas at the moment, think, thank God, I now connect to Singapore Airlines or one of the other Alliance partners for the next leg. also it's a long train trip up to the sunny coast to see you guys. It's going to be a long walk for me.

Gus Wurth (27:32)

It really is.

Ha ha ha.

Simon Dell (27:36)

Gas

final comments from you?

Gus Wurth (27:39)

Yeah, look, they are different cases. think in the Qantas ⁓ case, was that top-down effect. But I think it was also shorter-term thinking. How will this brand play out in three years' time if we're not able to back it up with our actions? the British Airways case was, think fundamentally, as we said at the start of the podcast, just a case of poor planning.

⁓ poor strategy and most importantly, poor research. So, you know, both disastrous but caused by quite different levers within businesses, which is probably what makes them interesting studies.

Simon Dell (28:20)

Look, gentlemen, thank you for your ⁓ comments, thank you for your research. What I hope that when people listen to this...

⁓ Yes, it's a great study in rebrand, but I think if your business is out there thinking about going through this process, I think there's a lot of things that you can learn from, even these big international brands, you can learn from them ⁓ and apply some of those learnings to your business. So gentlemen, thank you very much for your time today and appreciate both of your comments and your effort.

Joshua Cilento (28:55)

Absolutely.

Gus Wurth (28:57)

Thank