At no other time is a company's reputation more vulnerable than during a crisis. And yet, a well-established reputation can frequently lift a company out of a crisis.
This spring, Southwest Airlines had the opportunity to test its brand prowess first hand.
Southwest enjoys perhaps the best image of any airline in the country. It consistently scores high marks for good management, on-time arrivals, and employee satisfaction, and
it has the best safety record of any airline. When one of its planes careened through the end of the runway in Burbank, Calif., and came to a stop just short of a gas station, it
was major news - even though there were no fatalities. While other airlines with higher crash records have well-tested and practiced crisis plans, Southwest had only gone through
dress rehearsals. So this near miss was a first for the airline's PR team. Fortunately Southwest's legendary reputation for openness and excellence in communication carried it
smoothly through the turbulence of media inquiries.
In sharp contrast with Southwest is its long-time rival Alaska Air Group. These days, it seems like all Alaska Airlines has to do is turn the lights on in the morning and
there's another TV news crew in the driveway. Since Alaska was investigated for its maintenance policies and suffered its first crash in 25 years, the media has jumped on every
subsequent event as evidence of an airline taking a nosedive. The latest PR disaster involved a man who was denied a seat on a plane to Seattle to be at his dying daughter's
bedside. Apparently the gate agent asked for volunteers to give up their seats, but didn't mention the reasons. The family members also begged for volunteers to no avail. The man
was forced to take a later flight, the plane was delayed and he arrived an hour after his daughter died. Although the company acknowledged its fault, and did the "mea culpa"
routine extremely well, the incident received a hefty dose of bad publicity, and of course caused the media to recap every other problem the airline has suffered in the last two
years. Never mind the apparent heartlessness of the passengers who refused the family members' requests. Even if the gate agent had resorted to offering $10,000 per person to
coerce a selfish passenger to give up a seat, that would have been short money compared to the damage Alaska Airlines has now suffered to its public image. The conclusion: it's
not just CEOs and corporate communicators who need to understand the cost of a damaged reputation. This is an imperative that has to be internalized by every single employee.
Katharine Delahaye Paine is president of Delahaye Medialink (603/431-0111). Image Patrol is based on a subjective content analysis of major news sources covering a crisis.
Comments are not intended to criticize the work of the company in crisis, but rather to illustrate the role the media play in shaping the perceptions of various stakeholder
groups.
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Southwest Airlines *
Founded: 1971 * HQ: Dallas * Employees: 27, 600 * Sales (1999): $4.7 billion |
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Criteria
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Grade
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Comments
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Advice
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| Extent of coverage | D | As runway incidents go, this one received more than its fair share of coverage. Given Southwest's safety record, and the reputation of its CEO, Herb Kelleher, for being a good interview, the incident was widely covered by the national broadcast outlets as well as the print media. |
Having a perfect record can be both a blessing and a curse. Southwest would not have received such massive coverage if it hadn't been "the first" incident in its history. |
| Effectiveness of spokespeople | A | As always, Kelleher and other spokespeople did an excellent job communicating key messages. Not only did they stay on-message during the crisis, they maintained a degree of consistency that is rare under the best of circumstances. |
A reputation for great communications cuts both ways. The media will have great expectations, and will press you to speak before you're ready. Utter no words before their time. |
| Communication of key messages | B | Major messages reiterated that Southwest has the best safety record in the business and that they were prepared for the crisis. Unfortunately, the NTSB was equally good at communicating the fact that the plane came in too quickly. |
A crisis can be a great opportunity to get key messages out while media attention is focused on you. Southwest took advantage of the opportunity to emphasize its safety record, while addressing the issues at hand. |
| Management of negative messages | D | Two major negative messages came out during the course of the coverage. As might be expected, customers were quick to complain and point fingers at the airline. Far more damaging was the fact that the NTSB's preliminary report blamed the pilot for coming in too fast and not aborting the landing. A passenger echoed this sentiment as well. |
This is a perfect case of how reputation can help control the negatives during a crisis. When early reports focused the blame on the pilot (and thus the airline), the media at least gave equal time to the company's "it's too early to tell" position. |
| Impact on customers | C | A number of customers were quick to point out the problems that they faced as a result of the incident. However Southwest's broad reiteration of its great safety record probably offset the negatives. |
Reputation is in the eyes of your customers and future customers. Address their concerns and your reputation will remain intact. |
| Impact on shareholders | B | Southwest's communication of its safety record, its rigorous maintenance schedule and the airline's preparedness could only have impressed Wall Street. |
While reassuring passengers was the top priority, message consistency helped strengthen ties with investors as a secondary audience. |
| Impact on employees | B | Southwest's compassionate approach and focus on solutions for passengers (rather than on assigning blame) was likely reassuring to employees - many of whom were actively engaged in the crisis itself. |
Employees are the ones who enact your brand promise. If they aren't committed, it shows when push comes to shove. Here, they were engaged and, therefore, were able to respond quickly to the crisis. |
| Overall score | B | Faced with perhaps the worst crisis in its history, Southwest showed that by being true to its image, and consistent in its messages, it could leverage its brand power to dilute the impact of a crisis. |
A consistent brand promise and a commitment to excellence can ameliorate a crisis, but it can't make all the bad news go away. |
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Alaska Air Group *
Founded: 1944 * HQ: Seattle * Employees: 10,000 * Sales (1999): $2 billion |
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Criteria
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Grade
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Comments
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Advice
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| Extent of coverage | D | It could have been worse. Most of the coverage appeared in daily papers in Alaska and the Northeast. However, given that this is the airlines' target audience, those are the media that matter most. |
Beware of hometown papers. Establish a good relationship with them, and they'll spread the good word nationally. If their initial tone is negative, it's very hard to get anyone to see the other side of the story. |
| Effectiveness of spokespeople | B | Spokesman Jack Evans did an excellent job using clear language to describe the company's regret, and not hiding behind legalese. "If it were me, I'd physically have pulled somebody off the plane," Evans said of the incident involving an overbooked flight. While his statements couldn't change the results, his quotes were widely picked up and helped dispel negative feelings toward the company. |
A good example of how plain, ordinary language is infinitely preferable to whatever the lawyers tell you to say. |
| Communica-tion of key messages | C+ | Again, because of Evans' quotes, the compassion message was in every article. | No matter how many crises you go through, staying on message is still job #1. |
| Containment of negative messages | F | The unfortunate string of mistakes and problems was reiterated in most of the articles, only adding to the negative messages about the airline. |
Once your reputation is tarnished, the media will continue to drag it through the mud until there's no more news. |
| Impact on customers | D | Airline officials denied that the incident had any impact on ticket sales, but the fact that it was even brought up in an interview indicates it was a potential area of concern. Clearly, safety issues have a much greater impact. But with a little luck, the incident may make fellow passengers more compassionate in the future. |
There are few industries that affect people as personally as air travel. When everyone tells horror stories about your industry at cocktail parties, you need to spend a great deal of extra effort training your employees in how to protect the corporate image. |
| Impact on investors | C | Investors tend to get nervous after one crisis, never mind a half-dozen. | Multiple incidents tend to reflect a company with systemic, rather than isolated problems. |
| Impact on employees | D | Jack Evans put it best - "Employees are heartsick." Add to the public costs of the problem the fact that internal morale must be suffering. |
When weighing the cost of an action or a reaction, figure that replacing one employee (who leaves because of bad morale) will run around $100,000 - in lost productivity, cost of hiring, training, etc. |
| Overall | D | Many of the crises that Alaska Airlines has suffered appeared to be a result of poor choices in the face of tight budgets. | Every budget discussion should include a corporate communications person talking about the costs of a crisis in terms of external image and internal morale. |