Is Qantas Australia's favourite airline?

[Mattg]

I recently noticed that, depending on the country you're in, Googling "Qantas" brings up different results.

For example, in Australia, Qantas is apparently "Australia's most popular airline":




In Singapore, Qantas is "Australia's favourite airline":




But in the USA, Qantas is "one of Australia's most popular airlines":



Note the subtle difference. I wonder if it's due to U.S. advertising laws that require you to substantiate claims like "most popular" with evidence? Or perhaps I'm reading too much into this...

Has anyone actually awarded Qantas with the title of Australia's most popular airline?

 

[ja1]

That's an awesome question. I'd like to think depending on which group of people you ask they could simultaneously be

Australia's favourite airline
Australia's least favourite airline

From a brand perspective (as opposed to airline service) QAN was rated the #1 brand in AU (with VA making #3!) based on a TW article. So you could use that to argue they are certainly the favorite brand..

If you use Skrytrax as your guide there's a bigger gap - QAN rate in the top 10 of airlines worldwide and VA is 25th..

So you can use that to argue they're more of a favourite ? With the people who vote in that survey, who may or may not be Australian..

 

[exceladdict]

It looks like the search section, not ads, so yes it would be different website copy for sites in different geographies.

When I've been on charge of writing ads in the past, words that you can self-define the meaning of are always your best friend. All of those could be fudged but you could argue most popular would need to be evidenced by most seat miles of any Australian carrier or similar.

However, if that was an ad, I'd say There's also a chance that they have tracked you using cookies and you're just getting different versions of an ad, if version 1 doesn't work you get V2, etc. The blurb text is different in one example, too.

 

[Mattg]

It looks like the search section, not ads, so yes it would be different website copy for sites in different geographies.

When I've been on charge of writing ads like this in the past, words that you can self-define the meaning of are always your best friend. All of those could be fudged but you could argue most popular would need to be evidenced by most seat miles of any Australian carrier or similar.

If that was an ad, I'd say There's also a chance that they have tracked you using cookies and you're just getting different versions of an ad, if version 1 doesn't work you get V2, etc. The blurb text is different in one example, too.

None of the screenshots I posted above were ads, just in the regular results.

 

[exceladdict]

Bad use of the word ad in my second and third paragraphs replace with "web copy" or "SEO tags"

 

[oirets]

This is interesting, though I would have been more interested in fare differences when booked across these different regions (maybe worth looking into!).

My suspicion is that it's because Australia has quite lax advertising laws. In fact, the ACCC specifically lists "puffery" as an exception to false advertising, See information here. This basically means that you're allowed to say (as per the ACCC example) that you have the "best steaks on Earth" without it being considered misleading.

This is pretty relevant to the Qantas ad, because statements like "Australia's favourite airline" are clearly puffery, "Australia's most popular airline" may also fall into this category. Even though I don't doubt that Qantas has the highest passenger numbers out of any airline operating in AU, "most popular" is generally not well defined.

I suspect that the US has stricter advertising laws where "puffery" isn't as well accepted. Thus, they go with a much more subdued claim "one of Australia's most popular airlines".

 

[ja1]

None of the screenshots I posted above were ads, just in the regular results.

Welcome to why SEO and/or google makes a lot of money.

Can you really tell the difference between an ad and a regular result ? How ? Ostensibly you rely on google to mark results as a result of paid adwords vs 'regular results'..

I'm not trying to ascribe anything sinister to this - simply noting that as another poster pointed out, the rather large marketing team at QAN has probably done a whole bunch of research into what copy works better and optimised to have that show up in appropriate markets..

 

[ja1]

I suspect that the US has stricter advertising laws where "puffery" isn't as well accepted. Thus, they go with a much more subdued claim "one of Australia's most popular airlines".

While I've no doubt they run this stuff past legal, I really doubt this is the driver behind the tag lines...

I'm trying to think of what criteria QAN could use in taglines that would make anyone come after them or have any reasonable chance of doing so. It would have to be something much more specific, e.g. "Australia's airline that best protects your personal data and has never had a data breach ever".

I mean they could go with the "world's safest airline" and 60% of the population on the planet will quote rain man to back them up..

 

[serfty]

I'm currently in SIN at the EK lounge using their wifi.

Googling "qantas", this is the first result. It marked as an ad - the screen shot is incomplete as just further down is a booking search form, all part of the Ad.



Scrolling further I see further search results which are not so marked:

 

[RooFlyer]

In Belgium, the top results are:

 

[amaroo]

Might be the only one flying soon....

 

[GoldCanyon340]

"One of the most popular" is so wishy washy. There was a pub in the Adelaide CBD known for its steaks so it advertised itself as "Adelaide's worst vegan restaurant".

 

[ja1]

"One of the most popular" is so wishy washy. There was a pub in the Adelaide CBD known for its steaks so it advertised itself as "Adelaide's worst vegan restaurant".

Yeah not exactly original. Seen that in Brisbane, Sydney and in a few places around the world..

Amusing the first time you see it and who doesn't enjoy poking a vegan.. but of course every action has an equal and opposite reaction and if you're going to poke fun at vegans you also have to be able to listen to them explain to you why you are a murderer of animals - it's only fair sadly..

 

[Denali]

Thank you! A non corona question/thread. Something else to occupy my head (for a change this week)

 

[SeaWolf]

Might be the only one flying soon....

After this morning's announcements it doesn't seem like they'll be doing nearly as much of that either.

 

[ja1]

Perhaps they can have a new tag line "Australia's favourite airline, now 25% smaller to better suit new global conditions!" Hmm, not very catchy sadly.

 

[RooFlyer]

"Australia's favourite airline, now 25% smaller to better suit new global conditions!"

Nah, it would have to be something like “The world’s most enhanced airline”, wouldn’t it?

 

[pauly7]

Amusing the first time you see it and who doesn't enjoy poking a vegan..

A lot less people these days now it’s very clear we cannot sustain human life on the diets of food we are currently consuming forever.

Big corporate food producers 100% get it and hence you have vegan versions of everything popping up everywhere now - Plant based Milo (!) now out from one of the largest food companies in the world. I’m sure it’s still really bad for you though

 

[pauly7]

I recently noticed that, depending on the country you're in, Googling "Qantas" brings up different results.

For example, in Australia, Qantas is apparently "Australia's most popular airline":

View attachment 208872


In Singapore, Qantas is "Australia's favourite airline":

View attachment 208873


But in the USA, Qantas is "one of Australia's most popular airlines":

View attachment 208871

Note the subtle difference. I wonder if it's due to U.S. advertising laws that require you to substantiate claims like "most popular" with evidence? Or perhaps I'm reading too much into this...

Has anyone actually awarded Qantas with the title of Australia's most popular airline?

Great thread!

Qantas/any airline pretty much operates in an unregulated advertising market which means they aren’t ‘checked’ v a strict external guideline specific to airlines before they promote anything. They may have a friendly code of conduct but I haven’t seen anything.

They are however held to other overarching regulations, laws and ‘voluntary’ codes such as ad standards in Australia.

Australia actually has some nuances in its codes which can make it tricky on what you can and can’t claim - and in some categories that is becoming quite tough, for example in some categories you can’t automatically claim ‘Does not contain ingredient X’ even if your product doesn’t because it immediately suggests that what ingredient X your product doesn’t have is bad and therefore if your competitor has it their product is inferior which of course might not be true.... You have to have evidence to back that claim up.

Food is another area where thankfully (comparatively) AU is quite tough on what goes in and what can subsequently be claimed. Compare that to the US where they can jam almost anything into food and claim the sun shines out of it I personally do not consume any food made in the US because I know what they can do over there - makes travelling over there fun! Try and eat as much fresh as possible.... (even that is potentially GMO but I could go on for hours on that!) - So, companies that operate and sell in both the US and AU often have to completely reformulate and remarket their products in AU to meet our regulations. Thankfully.

 

[dmitri]

Mattg- It's most popular here in Tokyo