AVIATION:

A Qantas board member has taken responsibility for the airline’s failure to rapidly present a senior official to face the media after news broke on Wednesday of a massive data breach affecting its customers.

Qantas CEO, Vanessa Hudson, finally fronted the media on Friday by undertaking an interview with the Seven Network while on holiday in Greece.

Until then media outlets had complained about the lack of access to any senior management figure offering any response to the data breach that affected an estimate six million Qantas customers.

But Qantas director and advertising executive, Todd Sampson, (main picture) explained that he had offered to take the unusual step of being “the face” of the airline to help manage the crisis.

“Board members, apart from the chair of course, usually don’t front the media to discuss or explain operational matters,” Sampson explained.

“Directors usually leaves that job to the CEO or other senior managers, but in this case I – as an expert in advertising and image and crisis management – could readily see the need for a very rapid response.

“I knew Vanessa [Hudson] was on holidays in Greece so on Wednesday I immediately offered to front the media and settle any nerves of customers, shareholders, industry regulators, and governments.

“Naturally my first and most urgent decision was to decide what t-shirt I should wear for the cameras.

“I tried a few, like my designer camouflage t-shirt (below) which I thought might fit the bill, but on second thoughts I wondered if the TV cameras might actually be able to see me.

“Then I tried on my Qantas t-shirt (below) and I rapidly came to the conclusion that it was very suitable since it projected just the right corporate image.

“But, unfortunately, in checking myself out in the mirror when trying on the t-shirts I was shocked to realise that I was clean-shaven.

“We’re not filming episodes of Gruen at the moment so I hadn’t grown out my usual designer stubble.

“How could I front the cameras looking like I did? It put me in an impossible position.

“So I let the powers that be at Qantas know that I would still do a news conference on the data breach but I needed a few days to grow just the right amount of facial stubble.

“Then by Friday Vanessa had decided to do the Seven interview so my participation became moot.

“But I had, as a fallback, arranged for Qantas to urgently air freight one of my Qantas t-shirts to Athens just in case Vanessa needed it, but it was lost in transit.

“So if anyone is to blame for the lack of public communication in the past few days it’s down to me.

“In fact I’ve commissioned a new t-shirt with that message on the front which I’ll wear to the next board meeting,” Sampson said.

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