ADVERTISING:
A new Qantas TV advertisement is reported to have tugged at the heartstrings of viewers since first airing on Mother’s Day but the real-life mother it features says it has split her family.
The new ad – the latest in the airline’s “feels like home” campaign supposedly featuring real people filmed in real situations – shows a young man living in Tokyo who surprises his mother at her 60th birthday party by flying Qantas to Australia for his first visit since before the COVID lockdowns. (below)
The mother, who did not wish to be identified, said she had never felt comfortable with the advertisement which catches her reaction to her son’s sudden and unexpected appearance.
“Yeah, I’ve read stories about all the gender-shunning and man-bunned wankers in the advertising industry wetting themselves over the new ad,” she said.
“But are they really that shallow?” she asked before nodding silently in answer to her own question.
“I was really caught off guard when [name deleted] turned up at my birthday barbecue when I thought he was stuck in Japan.
“That threw me almost as much as when I turned up to the barbie an hour or so before to find a full-blown film crew there and to be told I needed for some reason to have make-up applied by a professional make-up artist.
“People who see the ad will notice that another of my sons hands me a Qantas boarding pass just before [name deleted] surprises me.
“For one brief moment I was so excited, thinking it was a boarding pass for me to fly to Japan.
“But then [name deleted] appears and so it wasn’t until later that I had a chance to read the boarding pass and put two and two together and realised it was the one he used to fly home from Japan.
“Also, as you see in the advert, [name deleted] turns left when boarding the plane – straight into business class. Seat 3A no less.
“Plus there’s shots of him stretching out in his big lie-flat seat for a long sleep during the flight which by my reckoning would have been all of 10 hours.
“I was in agony in labour for longer than that giving birth to the selfish little shit.
“Business class? For a 10-hour flight? At more than $8,000 return? Well, la-de-fucking-da.
“What about his old mum? Couldn’t the little arsehole have shouted me a trip to Japan instead of him pissing all that money up against a wall to swan over here and be filmed up the pointy end having a kip in Qantas pyjamas?
“I’d have been happy to fly cattle class to Tokyo and back, let alone business, and I wouldn’t need to sleep for most of the trip like that little snowflake,” she said.
The woman said she had not spoken to her son since the advertisement was filmed and wasn’t planing on making contact.
She also said she could not understand how anyone at Qantas or the airline’s advertising agency did not think through the negative implications of the ad.
“I bet that insensitive Irish shortarse signed off on it as one of his last tin-eared acts as CEO,” she added.
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