Reputation tour
Both Qantas and Optus are trying to rebuild their brands and trust with customers after a tough year, and new leadership is a key part of both companies' strategies.
Qantas and Optus are in two very different businesses. Yet while beaming internet to your phone and flinging you across the globe are two disparate services, the companies share some recent similarities — not least, by demonstrating the power of installing a new chief executive to salvage a battered corporate reputation and lost public trust.
Optus and Qantas both generate billions in revenue each year, but that’s tempered by enormous capex requirements and tight regulations. They are also both widely distrusted, coming in at No. 1 and No. 3 respectively on the list of least trusted Australian brands.
That's partially as a result of being in businesses where customers only notice you when you’ve messed something up. But both of them did mess up and are figuring out how to repair the resulting reputational damage.
Today, Qantas settled with the competition watchdog, agreeing to pay a fine of $100 million for selling tickets to cancelled flights — and another $20 million in compensation to customers of those “ghost flights". Also today, Optus appointed Stephen Rue as its new chief executive. The post has needed a permanent replacement since Kelly Bayer Rosmarin resigned last November following a day-long outage, which came after an infamous 2022 hack.
