Virgin’s post-AFL flight delays were a chink in its rebrand’s armour
The day after Virgin Australia launched its new ‘uptimistic’ brand campaign at the AFL Grand Final, the company was hit with technical glitches while flying fans home. The Ideas Business’ Wade Kingsley explains how the company could have managed Sunday’s upsets better.
If I was the CMO of an airline, I’d hate two things over everything else.
The first is social media, which for airlines has pretty much taken what used to be a very private practice – customer complaints – and turned them into very sharable content.
When a customer was dragged from a United Airlines flight in April this year, and another passenger uploaded a video of the incident, it resulted in brand damage that wiped an estimated $US1 billion from the value of the company. That’s billion with a B.
My flight was canceled. Fair enough, but the way staff handled it wasn’t inline with any sort of rebrand. The closest hotel they put people up for was a $75 taxi away (each way), which we were to get reimbursed.
Hotel was what you would expect on Grand Final weekend – not great. The $50 voucher for the restaurant didn’t work due to the restaurant being closed.
Here’s to looking up Qantas flights…