How Qantas ignored the social media warning signals
In this guest post Alicia Kennedy of online monitoring service Meltwater argues that Qantas failed to understand customer sentiment before launching its disastrous Twitter contest to win pyjamas.
By now, you’ve undoubtedly seen the latest social media debacle erupt over #QantasLuxury.
What started out as an act of goodwill to improve weeks of negative publicity, very quickly went south when thousands of people hijacked the hashtag to fire relentless comments about the recent Qantas grounding.
Just two hours after the competition was launched, #QantasLuxury reached ‘breaking trend’ status in Australia and was averaging approximately 130 tweets per 10 minutes. Overnight, there were over 14,700 social media mentions not just in Australia but in the US and UK too.
The big question, of course, is could Qantas have prevented this Twitter storm from erupting?
Mumbrella editor Tim Burrowes and advertising consultant Jane Caro discuss the debacle on today’s Sunrise:
To many, the answer seems blatantly obvious. Twitter’s appeal is in the ability to give the public a platform to vent their spleen.
If you take someone off the street and ask them what they use Twitter for, chances are they’ll say it’s to follow Ashton Kutcher’s latest crazy antics or complain about the lack of public transport during peak hour. We take a certain level of comfort in being able to express our opinion in real time and find a level of pride if others in the Twittersphere express their agreement.
More importantly, many see Twitter as that little keyhole by which they use to catch a brief glimpse of the human face of the brand that’s usually behind closed doors.
It’s the only instance where users can get the inkling that in fact, a real person is behind those company messages and people jump on the opportunity to offer their real opinion to that one accessible individual with no holds barred.
Before launching a publicity campaign on social media, Qantas – and brands in general – need to first check the temperature of online chatter.
Had the thousands of people who were inconvenienced by the recent lock out moved past the issue? Were the public ready to talk about the positives of the company yet again?
Judging from a social media analysis using our tools, the answer is a resounding no. In the three days after Qantas grounding, the brand received over 37,000 negative social media mentions and that alone should have sent warning signals to Qantas’ social media team.
Conversing with customers openly on social media, whether in good or dire circumstances, is crucial. In fact, we encourage brands to get in there and have an honest dialogue with people who are venting publically. But it’s important to do so, in an informed environment.
A permanent finger on the pulse is what’s necessary to maintain the level of awareness necessary to give customers what they need. It’s not just volume that’s key here – measuring sentiment is crucial to heading off issues as they arise.
Continuing with standard social media outreach without acknowledging those frustrations or connecting with their customer base in a more authentic way – ignoring the financial, emotional and logistical toll the lock out took on its stakeholders was a true recipe for disaster.
Although the majority of responses on Twitter were not constructive, the sentiments expressed in these were certainly a wake-up call for Qantas.
I know I’m preaching to the converted here but #QantasLuxury is yet another example of how companies can underestimate the power of social media tools like Twitter to mobilise thousands of people in a matter of minutes and hours.
Brands like Qantas, particularly those who have been operating in a challenging communications landscape, need to have the proper tools in place so they can quickly do some damage control when a crisis unfolds on social media.
- Alicia Kennedy, is area director of Meltwater ANZ
If Qantas want to salvage anything from this debacle rather than wishing it all away, they should take heed of the candid feedback offered by the public and customers. And learn from it. Quickly.
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Yes, there are some issues right now for Qantas in the brand/communications space.
However, this is not a social media problem that needs an analytics (read: meltwater ) solution right now.
This is a deep seated cultural problem, that needs to be understood and worked through. As a proud Australian that desperately wants to see this brand succeed, the social + analytics solution is a complete waste of time. In their currents of, you could put all the best tools and procedures in place up the wazoo. They won’t use these tools; and they would most probably would arrive at the same conclusions – #QantasLuxury and pajamas!
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People (and Kyle Sandilands) seem to take ‘twitter reaction’ too seriously. If things don’t work out it’s gone in a day or two at most.
Top line outcome was that a hashtag that links Qantas and Luxury was sitting on the side of every twitter users screen in Australia for most of the day .
People making a joke at a brand’s expense doesn’t mean they won’t fly with them tomorrow.
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What’s everyone’s thoughts on where they should head to next with this particular campaign? From what I can see on their Twitter page they are holding firm..
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@Renee. Their best option would be to sack their Marketing/PR people – and if they sacked their CEO, it would go a loooong way in restoring their brand.
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It’s major egg on face stuff but as Gus says, it’ll be short lived.
In all fairness, Qantas did a good job with their media relations throughout the whole dispute and many in the PR/Comms industry, most of whom would not face the media anywhere near as much as Qantas does, are too quick to judge.
The grounding was short term pain for long term gain and while I really feel for those who were affected, they are being compensated.
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Not sure that the business failed to understand the sentiment, they just failed to apply this understanding across the whole business. When entrenched in an issue like this every audience communication – from marketing programs, through to call center staff and advertising – becomes a public relations issue. Everyone in the airline would explicitly understand the community’s concerns, they just haven’t shown the leadership to respond to this concern in a uniformed manner.
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Social media is a two way conversation so you have to be prepared to take the criticism. Use Twitter, FB etc. to start a dialogue with the customers but don’t expect them to like you.
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Luke, we agree with you entirely and our POV is a little different to the mainstream analysis which has focused on the tweet-storm and how Qantas should have handled it.
We welcome your opinion – Demystifying Qantas and Social Media
http://igo2group.com.au/blog/d.....ial-media/
Walter @adamson @ @igo2 group
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I feel for the Qantas PR team – they had to try and manage a situation where the CEO had grounded the airline, disrupting tens of thousands of passengers, and placing the blame on “greedy unions” the day after he’d taken a $2 million pay rise. That is one tough situation to spin.
But trying to get the Twitterverse to talk about positives for the brand yeseterday was a huge mistake. The grounding is still fresh in people’s minds – they launched #QantasLuxury the day after the 21-day deadline set by Fair Work had arrived with no agreement reached. That latest update on the saga was all over the media, so naturally the issue was still in the forefront of people’s minds.
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Great to see you on camera Tim and looking forward to speaking with you about blogging on the Walkleys Media Conference panel this weekend:)
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Great post! Yes Qantas should have really taken the current hostile environment into account before creating this campaign. I’m surprised they even launched it. Launching it on twitter is even more of a disaster since twitter users love to stir trouble and complain at every given chance. Very bad timing and misunderstanding of their twitter audience.
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Completely agree, the twitteriti can be savage but very funny.
Should have taken steps straight away to stop the promotion but really what were they thinking running such a lame promotion in the current environment?
Here’s hoping other corporates do not get spooked about using social media due to Qantas’ blunder!
If you missed some of the funnier tweets – http://sportsgeek.com.au/socia.....gs-attack/
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not that i’m against an utterly and transparently self-serving attempted promo such as this, …BUT…the PR fail had nothing to do with whether QTS was conducting social media analysis using Meltwater’s or anyone else’s tools
it had everything to do with the fact that marketing has no PR sensibility and doesn’t report into Corporate Affairs
i can’t imagine that Olivia Wirth would have permitted them to do this
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Qantas announce Karl Sandilands as the new face of Qantas.
Now I would love to see that.
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