This little item from Qantas survived a couple of days in the letter box during the recent heavy rain and emerged with just a few damp patches. Impressive. I don’t know what they use to make this paper stuff but it sure is tough. (Just kidding – of course I know what goes into paper: the silent screams of Sumatran tigers and the soft exhalations of sad-eyed Orang-utans).
The marketing message itself is a soggy lettuce leaf of an idea that looks limp on the first page and then, embarrassingly, has to keep going for another 10 pages or so. It’s so weak it makes the Terms & Conditions page look interesting. No doubt it made a good pitch at the monthly S&M meeting but it’s only really speaking to those same people who think that what they’re selling is cool. Sometimes marketing departments just need to sit up and take a look at the world around them.
Anyway, it got me thinking about the colour red. Specifically the Qantas red. What a red it is, a true-blue Aussie red, appearing on everything from rugby shirts to credit cards, not forgetting the oceans of it applied to the tail fins of large aeroplanes. It’s a red that speaks to the heart of a nation of travellers, summoning up images of sunsets over the outback, the red dirt beneath our feet. How many Australians in distant lands have felt a tug on their heart strings when, noses pressed against the departure lounge window, they catch a first glimpse of Qantas red on the plane that will carry them safely home? I don’t know the exact figure but I imagine it’s a lot.
Such a powerful red deserves its own brand name (I’m calling it Q-Red) and that special reverence reserved only for the most iconic marketing concepts. I wonder how many man-hours went into developing Q-Red, subtly adjusting the shade and hue to arrive at the exactly the right effect. I imagine Don Draper himself mixed the colours while dragging on a Lucky Stripe and sipping his third lunch-time Martini. It must be one of the most jealously-guarded branding formulas in marketing, like Cadbury purple or Q-Red’s distant relation, Coca Cola red.
How deflating then to discover that Q-Red doesn’t look all that special after all. Judging by the mis-registration on this booklet, Q-Red is Simply Red, a mix of 100% magenta and yellow. That’s it. Red. A primary colour. Something so basic it excites only a third of our colour receptors. How simple is that? And what lazy marketing. I’m outraged that one of our national brand colours is nothing more than ordinary red. How typically Australian too.
“What colour do you want to use to define your national carrier?”
“Aw, red’ll do. She’ll be right.”
From now on, I’ll never look at Qantas red – I’m too embarrassed to call it Q-Red any longer – in the same way. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just red and that’s all I’m seeing.
