Behavioural economics, soft diplomacy and hardnosed pragmatism of airline marketing
Welcome to a Tuesday update from Unmade. The full post is only available to our paying members.
Today: With yesterday’s news that Qantas has made its ghost flights scandal (expensively) go away, we reflect on the state of airline marketing. And on the Unmade Index, IVE Group reels from the sudden death of its executive chairman.
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Flying at different heights
Soon, we’ll be telling you all about our plans for Unmade Compass.
It’s our end-of-year event which is free of charge for Unmade’s paying members. In essence, it’s nothing more pretentious than a panel-in-a-pub. Four or five interesting people reflecting on the year just gone and the year to come, answering questions from a friendly audience, shared with Unmade’s wider community later, in the form of a podcast.
Compass started as a single night in Sydney in 2021, grew to Sydney and Melbourne in 2022 and 2023, and this November will become a six-city tour of Hobart, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne. It’s a great way of taking the temperature of a fast-changing industry.
This isn’t an announcement just yet, by the way. (Although if you’re the sort of person who likes to plan, these are our provisional dates: Hobart - November 5; Brisbane - November 12; Sydney - November 13; Perth - November 18; Adelaide - November 19; Melbourne - November 20.)
There’s a reason I’m mentioning this now, before everything is fully locked in. This week, I experienced some airline behavioural economics at first hand. And I fell for it.
Jetstar announced its 20th birthday sale. And then Virgin Australia gatecrashed the party, announcing its own promotion too, cheekily entitled the “We’re coming to the party sale”.
And like all sales, there was a deadline. Suddenly, loss aversion kicked in.