What you need to know:

• The Optus brand and 80 of its employees made a second annual appearance at last week’s Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras this year, donned in rainbow lorikeet costumes and dancing in front of an 11-metre, custom built float.
• The partnership is first and foremost an employee engagement exercise, says VP of consumer marketing, Cameron Luby, noting the input of Optus’ Express Yourself committee as well as colleagues across the organisation.
• It’s also a strident commitment by the telco to continuing to embrace diversity and inclusion, something that’s increasingly being abandoned in the US by brands such as Meta, Google, Paramount, Pepsi, CocaCola, Accenture, Deloitte, Amazon and McDonald’s, following President Donald Trump’s derision of DEI practices and a ban against companies with such frameworks from US government work.
• There’s no doubt in Luby’s mind grassroots community engagement is helping to rebuild Optus’ brand and reputation after becoming Australia’s least trusted brand last year off the back of an extensive data break affecting 9.8m customers plus two substantial network outages that remain the subject of ACCC and ACMA federal court cases.
• Active brand campaign work, commenced six months ago by Optus to start repositioning along more confident lines, is also beginning to pay off with stronger brand trajectory, says Luby, while remaining coy on specifying numbers.

Diversity has become a dirty word in the US thanks to recently reinstalled President, Donald Trump and his ban on companies with DEI programs participating in government tenders. Cue goliaths such as Meta, Google, Walmart, Paramount, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Accenture, Deloitte, Amazon and McDonalds tossing away DEI recruitment targets, dismantling DEI practices or relegating such policies to the very back shelf of the storage room.

In stark contrast, Optus this past weekend proudly turned up the DEI dial by once again sponsoring and participating in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras for a second year (unlike Meta and Google, who depending on which version of events you believe, either pulled out of participating, or were asked not to participate by organiser Sydney World Pride and were subsequently relegated to media partnership status).

On one level, it’s clearly a brand and reputation play. Optus VP of consumer marketing, Cam Luby, confirms the telco’s recovery from several tough years and a crowning as Australia’s least trusted brand in 2024 remains an ongoing journey, albeit one he believes it’s getting better at traversing. Roy Morgan’s latest webinar this month suggested Optus lost more than 1 million customers to its competitors, which, if accurate, was worth an estimated $540m in lost revenue.

Its brand value has likewise suffered significant and sustained declines, though Optus performed better in the latest Roy Morgan rankings released in February, superseded by Coles and Woolworths as Australia’s most distrusted brands.

In its largest financials for H1 FY25, Optus’ parent SingTel also cited a 58 per cent rise in Optus’ EBIT growth to $223m off stable revenue of $4bn, along with +3.4 per cent growth in postpaid ARPU. The woes aren’t over, however, with two active cases being pursued by the Australian Communications and Media Authority and Australian Competition and Consumer Commission in the Australian Federal Court remaining an ongoing legal battle.

Employee engagement first, brand kudos second

Unlike many marketing efforts Luby and his team pursue, participation in Australia’s annual LGBTIQ+ event is first and foremost an exercise in employee engagement for Optus, he says. This year, 80 employees donned their dancing shoes and specially designed Rainbow Lorikeet costumes to participate in the parade down Oxford Street. The creative brains behind the bird motif, along with Optus’ 11-metre long, custom rainbow lorikeet float, was Emotive, who has helped the telco over the last two years with its annual Mardi Gras activation.

This year’s Mardi Gras theme was ‘Free to be’. Australia’s rainbow lorikeet was chosen as the mascot for Optus plus the phrase ‘free as a bird’ as a way of signifying freedom. In Optus’ inaugural presence last year, the theme was celebrating an attitude that unlocks a future full of possibilities. To do this, Emotive created an Optus spaceship to reflect Optus journey towards the future, coupled with the line, ‘It starts with yasss’, a play on the brand’s slogan.  

According to Luby, it’s working, with an internal employee survey showing 90 per cent of staff feel Optus is a diverse and inclusive environment.

“That’s a number that continues to climb year-over-year,” says Luby, adding the vibe in the Optus office on Monday morning was “buzzing”. “There are obviously lots of things we’re doing to drive that, but this [Mardi Gras] is certainly one of the cornerstone programs. It’s important to us, because we know, and we have seen research to this effect, that whenever you have an environment where people feel included and free to be themselves, those workplaces are ones where people are more engaged, more productive and then more innovative. So it’s great for us as a company and it’s great for our people.”

Luby is also insistent the Sydney World Pride sign-up is not viewed through the lens of a marketing program by cross-functional colleagues. He admits the brief Emotive gets from his team “looks, smells and is a marketing brief”,  but notes the people in the room looking at that are not just marketing people.

“Occasionally, these sorts of things can be owned and represented by certain segments of the company, but I have to say this is something the whole company really gets behind,” he says. “There are a number of different committees we have internally, such as Express Yourself, which is significant in size and engagement, and they’re the ones that represent the LGBTQIA+ community internally. But this is a huge partnership between folks in marketing, folks in that community, and people across the whole organisation.

“There were people from every single part of the company involved; we had 20 people fly in from interstate to be part of this as well… This is not a moment about spending money on a big float, this is about getting your community of people involved.”

The rainbow lorikeet was equally a win with all. “You could see a world where there could be some tension around what’s the right way for Optus to represent itself, and this was when the Emotive team came back with the rainbow lorikeet. When it came to me, it was basically ‘Hey Cam, everyone loves this, so we’re doing it’. For me, that’s best-case scenario.”

Emotive founder, Simon Joyce, says the key was ensuring Optus’ brand expression cohesively works with the overarching parade theme. “When you think of the lorikeet, you think of freedom, and the colours match the colours of the Pride flag. Then trying to create that flock coming down Oxford Street brought it all together. It is more brand-led, but the support people had for this moment was really special. It makes it even more meaningful in terms of what you do in the partnerships game.”

Fitting the broader marketing strategy

Don’t doubt, however, that this is an isolated incident outside of Optus’ broader marketing strategy. “We’re on a journey of rebuilding trust and reputation for Optus and we’re very much on that journey, and everything is moving in a positive trajectory for us,” Luby claims.

“One key way we rebuild that trust and rebuild reputation is engagement in grassroots community, demonstrating Optus wants to play and does play a meaningful and positive role in Australian society. There are a number of different ways we do that but this is very clearly one of them, and it’s a standout moment for us.

“It’s a part of that wider brand reputation rebuild, which we are very much on the path on, which is good to see.”

Optus kicked off this quest for constructive, not destructive, brand dialogue about six months ago, launching a new part-brand, part-product campaign using tongue-in-cheek creative and the star power of Aussie soap star icons such as Delta Goodrem and Jason Donovan to start to re-engage consumers in a more confident, positive manner. The product offer was positioned as a seven-day, no strings attached, first-of-its-kind trial designed to demonstrate just how confident Optus is in its network quality.

“But what we’ve really been doing over the past few months is very carefully and thoughtfully rebuilding the brand, and we’ve been doing that with a focus on our core products,” Luby told Mi3 at the time. “That has certainly had a tone and executional style that’s very respectful of the fact we are rebuilding.”

Improving brand consideration and sentiment remain the focus in 2025, says Luby. “Without going into onerous detail on the metrics, it’s largely about consideration and reputation. We can see they are consistently building over time. This is not a ‘we’re done’ moment, but something that is building.

“We know we’re on the right trajectory, and we can see that rippling through the organisation as well. So that’s what we’re looking at. We’re using our brand tracking, our brand reputation as a means of making sure we’re going in the right direction here.”

Partnerships also remain important, and Luby says he’s going for “fewer, bigger and better” alliances. He notes partnerships with the Art Gallery of NSW and Walkinshaw Andretti United supercars team as examples of how Optus can bring more benefits to customers and the small business community this year. “It’s really about doing fewer, bigger, more meaningful things at a grassroots level,” he adds.

Value as a loaded term

Luby is equally bullish about how Optus can respond to the ‘value’ equation modern consumers are seeking from brands.

“I think value can be a loaded term,” he comments. “When you say value, people often think price, and therefore just put the price up in headline. That’s not the way that consumers think about it though. They think about what you pay for what you get. If you get something that is good quality, that gives you confidence, and you feel no one else in the market can offer, then that’s worth paying for. Price is certainly a consideration. But this is not a price war. This is about what we offer Australia, and the fair price we expect them to pay.”

Commitment to consistent creative is another one of Luby’s beliefs, which is why the ‘Yes’ isn’t going anywhere.

“‘Yes’ is a cornerstone of the Optus brand and a big part of the energy and enthusiasm we bring, so we’re definitely not moving away from yes. For us, it’s about making sure we continue to give that meaning in the market and show we are offering real choice and that we’re acting as the champion for customers. But that [System1 The Magic of Compound Creativity] research? I believe in that,” he says.

“We can see that Australians clearly know the Optus branding, they know our colours, they know the sounds and ‘Yes’ mark very well. When we use all of those, and we bring it to life with energy and enthusiasm, right from the way we might do our performance marketing, all the way up into reputation programs like what we do with Mardi Gras, people recognise the brand really clearly. Using core brand assets is incredibly valuable to us.”