In the new testament of modern-day Australia, I envisage a new proverb: regulatory capture goeth before the fall.
This week, Woolworths boss Brad Banducci fell. Last year, Qantas boss Alan Joyce fell. What tripped them? Excellent lobbyists whose success blinded their masters to what the public would bear. Both secured advantages for their companies by playing the political game. Both masters tumbled when the public cottoned on that those advantages were at Mr and Ms Citizen’s expense.
Woolworths CEO Brad Banducci walks out of his interview with ABC TV’s Four Corners.
Alan Joyce is long gone, having flown the company and the country before he was forced to face a Senate enquiry. Banducci this week announced his retirement after losing his cool at a journalist in an interview with the ABC’s Four Corners.
Banducci presented to the TV interview in the uniform of a Woolworths cashier, complete with name tag “Brad”, staged in front of shelves full of no doubt heavily discounted wares. The optics were great; shame about the output. In the course of the interview, it was put to Brad that Rod Sims, the former chair of Australia’s competition regulator the ACCC, has said we have one of the most concentrated supermarket industries in the world. Banducci became agitated, suggesting that Sims’ knowledge was out of date. When the journalist challenged that statement, he demanded his outburst be edited out, storming off when the journalist demurred.
The temper tantrum remained in the final Four Corners episode. In fact, the ABC used the clip for promotional purposes. And thank Brad, ABC ratings inflated like supermarket profits. Monday’s show was watched by nearly 1.4 million Australians.
Now, if this had been a failure of media training, I’d be the first to sell you a workshop. But it patently wasn’t. Chances are Banducci was trained within an inch of his life – he was certainly dressed down and staged by someone with public relations in their job description – but he was incautious in a way that only someone used to not needing the media would be.
His media trainer likely carefully explained what “on the record” means. Brad was probably warned that the supermarket giant had no leverage with the ABC, which isn’t dependent on advertising revenue. Its odds-on that the Banducci disaster happened despite, not in the absence of, extensive preparation. Brad simply couldn’t suppress his contempt for a growing public sense that the supermarket giants aren’t playing the competition game straight. Let’s shorten that: Brad simply couldn’t suppress his contempt for the public.
That’s not the fault of his PR team. It’s a problem with the way very big companies work in Australia. It’s true that the public don’t really understand poor Brad. I mean, Woolworths competes fiercely with Coles. They both also have to compete with Aldi, which has taken a small but decent share of the public’s grocery (and ski onesie impulse buy) spend. So Woolworths (and Coles) find other ways to keep increasing profits.
Banducci and Joyce shared special talents, and one crucial weakness
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24.02.2024
In the new testament of modern-day Australia, I envisage a new proverb: regulatory capture goeth before the fall.
This week, Woolworths boss Brad Banducci fell. Last year, Qantas boss Alan Joyce fell. What tripped them? Excellent lobbyists whose success blinded their masters to what the public would bear. Both secured advantages for their companies by playing the political game. Both masters tumbled when the public cottoned on that those advantages were at Mr and Ms Citizen’s expense.
Woolworths CEO Brad Banducci walks out of his interview with ABC TV’s Four Corners.
Alan Joyce is long gone, having flown the company and the country before he was forced to face a Senate enquiry. Banducci this week announced his retirement after losing his cool at a........
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