The head of consumer marketing at Optus opens up about the internal and external challenges the telco faced when it was the target of then Australia’s largest cyber security attack. In a candid session at Cairns Crocodiles, presented by Pinterest, Cameron Luby shares what he learned, what the business could have done differently, and how its marketing efforts have evolved to restore trust and rebuild the Optus brand.
Cameron Luby had hardly worked at Optus for six months when the telco was plunged into a state of crisis.
In September 2022, the telco was the target of a cyberattack that exposed the personal data of around 10 million current and former customers – which at the time was the largest data breach in Australia’s history. A year later Optus endured another crisis due to an 8 hour network outage.
What followed both crises was a challenging and sometimes chaotic period for Optus and its staff, including consumer marketing lead Luby. It became apparent that the telco wasn’t equipped to handle a corporate crisis of this magnitude, leading to internal soul searching and an overhaul of the systems, processes, culture and marketing efforts.
“Our crisis response and training and processes weren’t quite up to scratch to handle something of this scale. It was challenging for us,” Luby admitted in one of the most insightful interviews about a corporate crisis in recent times.
“We didn’t have enough spokespeople in the company that were match, fit and ready to handle something like that and really support our CEO.
“And I think a lot of the communication we put out was infrequent and relatively inconsistent, because we were learning things as we went along.”
One of the issues that Optus had to grapple with was trying to control a narrative void that had been filled by sections of the media, and in particular social media.
“Specifically for marketing, there are a few big things that I would strongly recommend. The first one is that in a moment of crisis, there’s lots of information and data, and it’s very easy for this to swirl around and for the organisation to get a bit lost and distracted in what’s really happening,” he said.
Cancel out the noise
A lesson is not relying on the press and social media as a gauge for customer sentiment.
“One of the things that was quite disappointing is that on social media the sentiment can be terrible. We had a very strong female director at the time, and let me tell you that misogyny is alive in Australia.”
To get a better handle on customer sentiment, Optus carried out weekly customer polls, focussing on questions like ‘Optus will be better as a result’ to understand the areas the telco felt it had to improve its customer service.
Optus’ messaging doubled down on accountability for the cyber attack, informing customers about its value proposition and that it had the fastest 5G.
The telco shifted its marketing focus from “celebrities to customers”, with less focus on brand and more on rebuilding customer trust (see video below).
“What chimed with David Ohana’s presentation yesterday is when he said you should spend less time making ads and more time doing valuable things and talking about those. That’s the path that we are on now,” he said.
An example of this includes the launch of Optus Pulse, which provides real-time information on the customer’s connection status and the signal quality they are receiving on their device.
Enable employees to ‘feel trusted’
On the culture front, Luby said that what quickly became apparent are the employees that feel trusted to make quick, agile decisions and the ones that don’t feel trusted, with the latter often slowing down decision making and causing internal challenges.
“What they do is screw up all of the people who do feel trusted,” Luby said. “It’s important to make sure that people are clear on their role, their responsibility, and you’re empowering them to make the decisions that they need to make every single day. When a moment of crisis comes, they are the ones who are going to be on the journey towards rebuilding your brand and trust with your customers.”
Luby said the shift in culture, internal processes and marketing has led to a much stronger response by the telco when it came to the network outage process, and has left the business in a far stronger position to handle any crisis in the future.
It has also helped the telco improve its brand metrics; its net promoter score is a few percentage points from where it was prior to the cyber attack and trending upwards.
This has left Optus with solid foundations for its next phase of marketing. The telco is on the cusp of revealing the results of its creative and media agency reviews. Industry rumours speculate it could all go to Accenture Song and Droga5, although Wavemaker and the incumbent UM are also in the running.
“[Our brand rebuild journey] is honestly something that I’m really proud of and it gives us a great platform for what comes next, which is to reconnect Australians with the Optus brand.
“If we had come out of the gates with a big brand thing, Australians would not have bought it. “We have existing new leadership at Optus, the team’s a great place, and we have been marching up those stairs. Now we have the opportunity to start taking some bigger and bolder steps.”
Cam Luby’s three tips to crisis management
- Down by the elevator, up by the stairs.
- Be customer focused, and category aware.
- Australians are fair people who will trust you if you show you’ve got the right intentions.
