The art of surviving a controversy

Dubai - Beset by a sudden PR catastrophe? Don't lose your mind; here are four lessons you need to learn

In our connected world, it does not take very long to stretch a brand to a breakpoint - recent notable examples being United Airlines and Pepsi. While the case of Pepsi was not overly damaging, United Airlines has set an all new standard.
Pepsi launched an ad that suggested that you can solve police brutality with soda. Less than 24 hours later, the company apologised, in response to widespread anger and mockery over the Black Lives Matter-referencing spot. While it was insensitive and an act of erroneous creative judgement by the Pepsi brand, consumers do give brands the benefit of doubt if they have a long history of delivery, and back their brand proposition with product excellence and innovation. Pepsi learnt its lesson from this episode and will certainly move on, and I believe, so will consumers in time.
United Airlines however, is a completely different case. Its slogan "fly the friendly skies" went for a toss as airline staff unceremoniously dragged a bloodied passenger from his seat. It's been a particularly challenging season for United, which recently faced another controversy, where two girls were not allowed to board because they were wearing leggings. Indeed, controversy is not new to United. It suffered the ignominy of the most popular hate video ever against a brand, with over 17 million views to date. A trio of protest songs by Canadian musician Dave Carroll and his band, Sons of Maxwell, United Breaks Guitars chronicles a real-life experience of how his guitar was broken during a 2008 trip on United Airlines, and the subsequent reaction from the airline. The song became an immediate YouTube and iTunes hit upon its release in July 2009, and a public relations embarrassment for the airline.
So how has it gone so wrong for United? A few lessons immediately cross my mind.
Customer experience is the brand: Service brands live through the people who deliver the promises the brands make. If the culture of an organisation is not underpinned by a strong service mindset, then failure is imminent. Going forward, the share of mind and attention of brand management functions in service industries such as airlines, banks, hospitality and telecom, will become increasingly oriented towards delivering an exceptional experience. The service industry will also need to introspect on how to reinforce a stronger customer-oriented culture amongst staff, in addition to hiring people with the right service mindset and creating a performance-driven culture, to inspire people to consistently deliver the desired level of service.
Brands should not promise what they cannot deliver consistently: United has never had a great service reputation. It was surprising that it chose to position itself as "fly the friendly skies". It's extremely risky and clearly unsustainable when brands get carried away by fancy advertising claims that they can seldom back. The truth is that marketing amplifies an organisation's capability. It is the responsibility of the executive to strike a fine balance between the ability to deliver and public claims.
Brand love can quickly turn into mass vitriol and hysteria: Social media has helped shift the power equation to the customer, who can post, comment, rate, like, or share like never before. Fans can easily turn into foes if brands do not have a well-thought through social response mechanism. United took several days to post an apology and for the CEO to make a public appearance. Companies that do not have a crisis management plan need to be seriously worried. This also underlines the need to have strong social listening tools in place for early pick-up of issues and to try to contain them before they become full-blown crises.
Errors happen. How you handle them makes all the difference: Of the 613 million people who flew on major US carriers in 2015, 46,000 were involuntarily denied boarding, according to data from the Department of Transportation - less than 0.008 per cent of the total traffic. If this is routine for airlines, shouldn't there have been a structured way to handle this? I understand that despite cash incentives offered the passengers on that flight were just not willing to bite. Perhaps a more lucrative incentive could have done the trick! These are typical decisions that one needs to empower and train the front-end management to execute and deliver. It is unclear if United gave that empowerment to its people and equipped them with escalated decision making access in situations that they found difficult to manage.
On a surprising note the stock price of United has risen some 33 per cent over the past year. Perhaps the reason is a lack of choice. United is one of the Big Four airlines that now control about 70 per cent of the US market, and for some travellers in some regions, the carrier is the best or sometimes only option, no matter what controversies may erupt.
So, while Pepsi may survive on its own merit, United Airlines may survive due to a lack of choice. But the fact remains that brands can ill-afford to take their customers for granted. 
The writer is executive vice-president and head of group marketing and customer experience at Emirates NBD. Views expressed are his own and do not reflect the newspaper's policy.