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AirTran New Year’s Day PR Debacle

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Disney Epcot 2011 New Year's Celebration by Soulati Media, Inc.

On New Year’s Day 2011, I arrived at the Orlando Airport anticipating a smooth travel day after a five-day vacation at Disney World; we were tired and ready to be home. To my chagrin, our flight to Baltimore via AirTran was delayed, not cancelled, due to the absence of one flight attendant. We were told flight crews had been partying as it was New Year’s Eve, and they didn’t want to come to work. (REALLY? What an unprofessional and poor public relations message to passengers.)

After two hours waiting, scurrying to get on standby for the direct flight and then resolved to spend the night in the airport with my child (it’ll be an adventure, honey, really), the terminal erupted in W00Ts; the errant flight attendant showed up to work (or some replacement).

When we arrived in Baltimore and experienced yet another delay on the next leg of the journey, we learned there were, unofficially, 40 Airtran pilots and 200 flight attendants who had walked out on New Year’s Day. Flights nation-wide were disrupted – either cancelled or delayed. Passengers in terminals since 4 a.m. were on the fringe of a nervous breakdown.

The Baltimore-Boston folks received $100 travel vouchers (as if they’d ever travel the airline again) and had to wait for the Montego Bay pilots to arrive internationally, transfer to domestic, and fly them home. Luckily for me, we only arrived one hour late to our destination, but the in between was stressful.

To make sense of this public relations debacle, I asked two of my best pals, Flight Attendant Kimberly Sutherland and Tim Adams, a high-end pipefitter for a local union, to help me understand the perspective from the airline employees:

  • Kimberly was shocked when I informed her AirTran personnel suggested its crews were hung over. Then she explained it was probably a walkout due to contract negotiations. AirTran is allegedly merging with Southwest airlines, although that merger has not been finalized. I searched around for news bulletins of the New Year’s Day walkout and was surprised to find nothing I could tap.
  • Tim shared his passion for his union and echoed my thoughts on the bad public relations move by AirTran. He said unions don’t create bad public relations; in fact, they try to uphold a professional image. Tim’s communicated his appreciation for his brotherhood loudly and clearly along with pride for his expertise and profession. While all unions are different, he said, the pipefitters local strives to uphold its credibility.

What it always boils down to is the almighty dollar when it comes to union negotiations. Regardless, consumers, and passengers in this case, will always suffer so someone gets paid more.

As for public relations and the AirTran image, well, I think you can form your own idea of what a poor move that was on New Year’s Day 2011 for future business.

Change Twitter Habits to Spiff a Boring Stream

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Credit: scienceblogs.com

You can’t get complacent with Twitter. You may not know you’ve done so, and here’s a few suggested pulse points:

  • Do you only follow the same tweeps each day and respond to them and no one else?
  • When was the last time you opened a new link to a new tweep’s blog and engaged?
  • Are typically the same people replying to your tweets and RTs?

It’s easy to get comfortable on Twitter, reading the same blogs and getting more acquainted with the same gaggle of folk. We’re human after all; not many people like to step out of their comfort zone, but I’m encouraging you to reflect on your Twitter habits and spiff up a boring stream.

The dawn of a new year is a perfect time to ask the following questions:

  • Am I merely engaging with peers in my own profession?
  • Am I learning another vertical?
  • Has someone ticked you off with their behavior on Twitter?
  • What are you gaining from your Twitter experience?

When you explore your original objectives about Twitter engagement (and you fast learn it’s much more than “hi, I’m going on a hot date tonight,”) then ask and answer the aforementioned questions.

Peers in Your Space

Professionals in your space are most likely to support your commentary. I love Davina Brewer @3hatscomm for her always banter around my public relations opinions. We’re in the same field. She’s not likely to send business to me nor I to her; perhaps we’d team up on a project, yet we’ve never discussed it. So, in essence, we’re competitors yet friendly and supportive. Love that. Our Twitter engagement is top notch, and I’m not likely to unfollow her any time soon.

Learning Another Vertical

Everyone knows enough about an industry to be dangerous. So, dive in to an entire stream of tweeps expert in health care or engineering. What you can glean from them is a treasure; trust me, because I did it in social media a few years ago. Twitter was my training ground in social media, and the pace was fast and furious. All those online courses – for the birds.

Ticked Off?

There was a woman I had been following for a good year. I noticed how she flitted from blog to blog and arrogantly posted a criticism and lofty opinion and then moved on without responding twice. Then, I watched her comments on a chat forum and began slowly to become annoyed with this behavior. I cleaned my stream and that was that. Better balance all in all. You can do the same and keep the peace.

Gaining from Twitter?

Twitter’s hidden gifts are numerous, myriad; like a new galaxy. If you can’t list 10 perqs off the bat, you’ve got a problem and you’re likely using Twitter the wrong way. I bet if you ask yourself “what am I gaining from Twitter?” you’ll be surprised what’s in the treasure chest.

There’s no way any of this can happen if  you complacently watch the tweets roll in. Change your Twitter habits and keep your stream fresh. Lead Twiter instead of letting it lead you; what a great business goal for 2011.

Claim Your Social Media Identity

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I just got and am fiddling with a Droid 2 smartphone and what a smarty it is. I’m truly amazed at the apps and functionality of these babies that work like a laptop and browse with ease. Now that I have both this phone and my Blackberry, there’s no comparison. I’m antsy to upgrade immediately.

Over the weekend, something happened to shock the pants off me – someone phoned me and instead of her photo popping up with her number, the image of another woman popped up (who also has the same name as the caller).  At first I was confused how the woman in the picture got this phone number, and then I realized the caller was really who she was supposed to be, and the woman whose image popped up when the call came through was the “impostor.”

It didn’t take me long to understand how this could happen. The woman with the image is on social media with a BlogSpot blog as well as Twitter account on which she’s active. In fact, through the day, the other woman’s tweets began to cultivate in the contacts list on the Droid for the woman who owns that mobile number.

What to do? I’m open for suggestions on this one, folks, as it’s my job to fix this conundrum. Here’s the social-media-claim-your-identity strategy I’m going to follow (REPEAT: I’m totally open for suggestions on what you’d do, please!):

  • Register the woman’s image on Gravatar. (I wrote about how you do this here.)
  • Set up a Twitter account with that same image and help her with a consistent Twitter strategy.
  • Set up an Open ID with that image, as well.
  • Set up a Disqus account, Friend Feed, Bing, and any other social media sites
  • Join Facebook and set up that account with that same image over her name.
  • Hit LinkedIn and update her profile and make it viewable to the public with the same image.
  • Set up a blog over her name and affix her gravatar with the blog and drive links and traffic to the blog.
  • Update her website, for which she owns the domain for her personal name and every possible extension, with Internet marketing to boost search engine rankings. The site, currently in flash, may need to be rebuilt in a content management system like Drupal so the engines will recognize the content and coding. (I don’t believe the search engines have begun to accept flash sites yet for SEO?)

Beyond this approach, I’m still not sure I can get the caller’s own photo to synch with her mobile number after my phone already has the image of another woman locked in. By actually establishing her presence for the first time and trying to help her claim her social media identity, we’ll be that much closer to fixing the problem.

What do you think people who have the same name as another ought to do when they’re not interested in social media engagement? When something like this occurs, there’s no time for complacency – it’s forced engagement to protect a personal, and in this case, professional brand.

What If There Was No Twitter

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Mark Schaefer is a long-time social media peer, colleague, and mentor with whom I banter and exchange heated yet friendly discussion about my views that PR Drives Marketing and his view that I’m on crack.

So, I linked to his tweet with intrigue to this magazine I’d not heard about, Social Media Marketing Magazine (which I now have joined), and, lo, here’s Mark’s excellent article “Why Facebook is More Important Than Your House.” He’s writing as adjunct professor at Rutgers University (pretty cool).

I encourage your read of what Mark’s saying, and then I encourage your contemplation of what I’m saying.

In a nutshell, Mark suggests that people are so aligned with Facebook it has become a lifestyle – the Farmville crap, photos of the grandkids readily accessible, and all the other inanities being exchanged among friends. (My words, not Mark’s.) We can’t forget that our kids are officially the Facebook Generation. Gen Y begets Gen FB.

Where others have glommed onto Facebook; I have become absolutely addicted to Twitter. Mark’s article got me thinking…what if there was no Twitter?

  • The spark in my life would slowly extinguish, and I’d again be commiserating, ranting, laughing, bantering, and learning from my Google RSS reader (which sadly is a one-way street).
  • Blog comments would be more robust because peeps would have to log their commentary directly on a blog as there wouldn’t be Twitter comments about blogs (which happens frequently).
  • Alas, I’d go into deep depression because the peeps I’ve met have extraordinarily enriched my life, professionally and personally. It’s these human relationships I can absolutely say are the single-most hidden gifts of Twitter.
  • My global network with direct connections and open communications to Hong Kong, Sweden, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, Puerto Rico, Australia, Canada, Singapore, Brazil, and hundreds of other cities and countries would be non-existent.
  • My learning curve would again be extended (as in take longer) without the immediate knowledge sharing Twitter offers.
  • There’d be no place I could let loose a rant, exclamation or share in the fund-raising support for a global natural disaster.
  • Most of all I’d have no community in which I could align, be a peer, become a mentor, share in a leadership capacity or move to a thought leadership and influencer role. I’d be relegated to the traditional method of networking by, argh, actually going to a physical meeting.

Perhaps your experience with Twitter has not been as rich as mine; if that’s the case, I encourage your exploration of this channel because Twitter’s hidden gifts bear more than the Three Wise Men.

What would you miss if there was no Twitter?

National Media Vitamin D Confusion

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I had no intention of posting today; in fact, I liked my post yesterday, Thoughts on Public Relations, and wanted it to stay front and center one more day.

But this morning’s news stories in our two national papers (sorry USA Today) for the first time I can recall conflict. I’m shocked and keep reading each story to ensure I’m not seeing things or my brain is misfiring. It’s not:

  • In the Wall Street Journal (everyone knows I read it each morning and it’s my muse for blog fodder) in Personal Journal is the story “Triple That Vitamin D Intake, Panel Prescribes” by Melinda Beck. I read that column and reached for my Vitamin D capsule and promptly popped it. Beck’s reporting is taken from “a long-awaited report from the Institute of Medicine to be released Tuesday.”

How on earth can two highly credible, national reporters cover the same report to be released today with two opposite angles?

Should consumers triple their intake of Vitamin D as encouraged in the Wall Street Journal, or should we avoid Vitamin D and calcium because we already get enough, according to the New York Times?

Media Relations Strategy Gone Awry

As a media relations expert, I am disturbed as a professional with these stories. Knowing how national media work, it’s obvious the reporters each got an advance with the institute issuing the report.

  • But, how on Earth did the media relations practitioners not know the angles these two reporters would take and recognize each was covering the story from opposite ends of the spectrum?
  • Should the finger point at media relations?
  • Were spokespeople trained appropriately and was there a message map created?
  • Should the finger point at the spokespeople toplining highlights of the research during media interviews ?
  • Was the strategy to give each paper a different angle?
  • Was there a media strategy?

The national media must clarify the angles they took to cover this research, and that can only happen IF my recommended public relations strategy was executed right now:

  • Issue a press release clarifying to the nation whether consumers need more Vitamin D or not (and calcium).
  • Issue an Internet press release to crawl the Web immediately to rectify the news.
  • Use social media for this entire week to clarify the news about Vitamin D.
  • Launch a special website with highlights of the research and share the clarified message.
  • Put the spokespeople in front of the national morning show circuit to fix the damage these two stories have done.
  • Immediately contact each reporter with the appropriate news peg and asking for their help to rectify the news.

In my 26 years in public relations with a specialty in media relations, I’ve never seen anything like this. Astonishing.