Qantas A380 emergency ‘biggest PR disaster of 2010’
The worst media disaster of 2010 was the Qantas A380 emergency, public relations blog PR Disasters has said.
According to the list, compiled by blogger and PR Gerry McCusker, the near-catastrophe and its aftermath was a bigger PR disaster than CommBank’s controversial interest rate hikes, Labor’s bodged mining tax and the Melbourne Storm salary cap rort.
The ten PR disasters:
- Qantas – A380 fleet consecutive engine issues and passenger delays
- Commonwealth Bank – premium interest rate hikes
- Labor Party – corporate backlash against the proposed ‘super tax’
- Melbourne Storm – salary cap scandal
- Stephanie Rice – homophobic comments posted via Twitter
- Canberra Raiders – Joel Monaghan ‘dog sex’ photo
- Virgin Blue – reservations and check-in system crash
- Matthew Newton – after alleged assault of then partner Rachel Taylor in Italy
- David Jones – CEO sexual assault scandal
- Lara Bingle – media relations following split with Michael Clark
McCusker worked with online and social media monitoring agency Cyber Chatter to analyse the blunders.
McCusker said: “We’re seeing that social media is increasing influence in determining the impact and duration of PR disasters. As citizen media clearly aids commentary and sharing of bad news stories. It’s essential to have strategies to cope with online sniping and gossip.”
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Late entry from Nick Riewoldt and the St Kilda Football Club
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Not sure about Qantas taking the number one spot. Sure, the engine explosion caused massive problems for the airline and for others using the same engines. However, I thought the way Qantas handled the issue was close to textbook. They admitted the problem, grounded their fleet of A380s and made it clear they would not fly them again until the problem was identified and fixed. And, they did what they said they would do. Contrast this with Singapore Airlines (which flies the same jets with the same engines) which grounded their fleet reluctantly and probably only because they were forced to do so by the actions of Qantas. OK, perhaps it was very good crisis mangement rather than PR, but there’s a fine line between the two these days.
The rest of the list is probably about right, although the Labor Party’s performance in changing leaders then making a total hash of the election (rather than just the mining tax) deserves to be at or near the top.
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I would have thought the merciless axing of a serving Prime Minister by invisible dark forces of the NSW right and replacement with the robotic Gillard and a government now lurching from one pr disaster to the next – NBN, Christmas Island – would rank the highest of all.
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What? A Qantas crew successfully and safely lands a plane with burning engines, then grounds the fleet until the problems are resolved. How is this a PR failure? Would it have been better to keep the planes flying and risk people actually dying?
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Sorry Gerry, I also disagree with Qantas taking the no. 1 slot. They handled this with PR mastery worthy of a Tylenol Award. I agree with @Dan
Read this:
http://www.marketingritson.com.....210554.pdf
You should know better 😉
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From the PR Disasters website:
“This year, our Public Relations Disasters blog partnered with online and social media monitoring agency Cyber Chatter to run, analyse and calculate Australia’s biggest PR blunders, using world-leading Alterian SM2 technology.”
So, Qantas is a PR disaster because a piece of software said so.
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I completely agree with Dan. The Qantas issue was well handled considering the complexity of the problem and how potentially damaging it could have been. Firstly, the issue was a manufacturing/design flaw with that type of Rolls Royce engine and had absolutely nothing to do with Qantas or its maintenance program. In fact, this incident illustrated that Qantas flight crews are second to none. Thankfully the explosion didn’t occur at take off when engines were at maximum RPM because the damage sustained to the aircraft meant that the flight crew had no control over the engine and lost the ability to control thrust and initiate engine shutdown. Personally, the ousting of K. Rudd came in at number one for me; closely followed by Mumbrella’s coverage of the Encore Awards… it has to be said – WTF was that?
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What about NAB and its crashing network?
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Agree that McClusker has got it wrong – Qantas handled the crisis very well. It was a PR victory not a blunder. Mark Ritson, however, should stick to marketing and not discuss PR because he just embarrasses himself.
To wit:
“The key to Tylenol’s success, and Qantas’ ambitions, is to ignore the very generic PR doctrine that tells all brands to act the same way in a crisis and to use brand positioning to guide the response in a very specific direction. For Qantas, that means reinforcing and reiterating the message behind the so-called
“Rain Man moment” when Raymond Babbitt proclaimed that he
would only fly Qantas because it was the only airline that had never crashed.”.
ER no, Mark. Qantas did not come out and say ‘dont worry everyone, we didn’t actually crash and we haven’t done so now”. Qantas simply grounded its fleet and put its CEO forward to shift blame to the lead-footed Rolls Royce who proved to be the slowest moving target in the world. There was no ‘brand positioning’ here – it’s just crisis management 101.
Aside from the fact that he then completely fails to proexplain how brand positioning guided the response, choosing instead to discuss the movie Rainman, no such ‘generic PR doctrine’ exists in theory or practice. If Ritson’s
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Hi all,
Thanks for the feedback; good to see everyone responding so quickly with their own opinions.
To move the evaluation of the annual PR Disasters Awards away from just ‘gut feel’, we tried a more hybrid method this year using Alterian SM2 to really ferret out digital/social media analysis. Looking at levels of negative opinion on social media is a very telling gauge of honest, direct-from-consumer feelings and opinions. The factors SM2 evaluates include; overall volume of conversations around the incident, types of media commentary (neg vs pos), duration of coverage and trends of sentiment towards the company/person re the issue. On the basis of these stats, Qantas (with more than 35,000 negative posts to the issue at hand) topped the analysis by more than three times its nearest PR disaster rival.
I totally agree that Qantas’ handling of the subsequent fallout was good (actually said so on Sky TV last night), but 35,000 angry, bitching, bitter comments still out there…
If anyone has a comparable PR disaster-analysing methodology, we’d be happy to see, consider it and make amends with the new evidence. Ta
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I’ll vote for the axing of Rudd as #1 PR disaster. Look who they got. It’s ongoing.
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I agree that Qantas handled the A380 issues very well in terms of PR and communicating with the relevant people. Essential strategies to cope with online sniping and gossip? How ridiculous. Twitter is like trying to talk in a room when 1000 other people are talking at the same time. It is not a ‘strategic communication medium’ and I would think it almost impossible for anyone to respond to every little bitch session by people who just want to make any comment they feel like – correct or not. Well done Qantas – you’re still #1 in my book.
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I don’t think measuring negative comments on the Interwebs is the best way of measuring PR success. Surely the number of negative posts on Twitter would have been even higher if Qantas had responded poorly?
I vote for the federal government not explaining the mining profits tax properly as another PR disaster.
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Personally I’d nominate PRDisasters.com as Australia’s worst PR disaster in trying a cheap, misguided shot at a big corporation’s crisis to get publicity in the quiet week before Christmas.
On a serious note, Gerry, I don’t think you’re helping yourself, Alteris or the credibility of social media in drawing these conclusions from such a flawed analysis.
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I wonder if some of the comments are slightly missing the point of what Gerry’s list is about – it’s not who handled a PR problem the worst – it’s about who was hit by a PR disaster, whether of their making or not.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
@Mumbrella – fair point, you’re right of course.
But I think the conversation on this site has moved it on to the next level of the story arc, which is about the HANDLING of said PR disasters.
@Gerry made the point in his earlier post that this is quantitative analysis. I’d also like an accompanying QUALITATIVE op piece about “Best Handled” disasters …
@Sven – I’ve approached Qantas for an articulation of the official brand positioning with regards to guiding their response … Ritson may well be right.
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Tim – the point is Qantas was NOT hit by a PR disaster because of the way it handled the incident. As Ritson points out, the exploding engine may well have a positive outcome for Qantas.
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Billionaire Gerry Harvey whinging about people buying goods online from overseas was not a good look for him.
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I think CommBank should take the no. 1 spot for worst handled PR disaster …
One, it demonstrated pure greed by hiking interest rates by almost double the amount of the official RBA rise and then whinging about “higher funding costs”
Two, the untimely nature of the rate hike on Melbourne Cup Day (y’know, the “race that stops a nation” and all that), and in the 50-day run up to Christmas!!
Three, further antagonising Treasurer Wayne Swan who referred to this action as a “cynical cash grab”, plus giving the media such good bank-bashing material
So much for “Determined to be Different” …
More like: “Determined to be Dickheads”
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Gerry Harvey whinging when he has no idea about online
Retail
BP (was that 2010?)
Fairfax in their letter to Mumbrella…
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I’ve really enjoyed reading the healthy debate above, and it’s led me to put together my own blog on the top 5 PR disasters of 2010. It identifies each one, how and why they failed, and how they could have done better. Qantas doesn’t come out particularly well, but *not* because of the handling of the A380 incident. Check it out at http://tiny.cc/r36wi or http://www.colelawson.com.au/P.....fault.aspx and let me know your thoughts. Cheers, Margaret
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