When the Twitterverse Turns on You

Case Study: When the Twitterverse Turns on You

Current Situation and Problem Recognition

Canadian Jet is an airline company that has made a negative name for themselves due to the most recent past events. About six months ago, a third of the Canadian Jet fleet has been grounded for a week owing to some engine safety concerns, causing multiple of cancellations and delays. Also on top of the engine safety concerns, there had been some negative press about the airline’s approach to labor relations following a threatened strike by the employed ground crews. The company later created a campaign that they launched to help restore Canadian Jet’s image as a preferred carrier. With the help form the head of public relations, Chalene Thompson, and a team at Wrigley & Walters, the airlines launched its first Twitter contest: The person who posted the most creative tweet using the hashtag #CanJetLuxury would win two round-trip tickets to any of the company’s destinations. The company executives were hoping to get positive and creative tweets but the contest backfired exposing the company's errors by tweets that said “Jet Luxury is getting away with not paying employees fairly” and “getting to my destination without the engine catching fire.” After Charlene read most of these comments she contacted the CEO of Canadian Jet, Jerry Schneider, to inform him of the current situation. Jerry and Charlene, contacted the head of Social Media, Tim Powell, and the account manager from Wrigley & Walters, Andrea Kemp. The four of them sat down and discussed the the options that would prevent the trend and the reputation of the company to be more exposed. The first option that was presented was to change the hashtag and get people to start using a new one that was suggested by Tim. Tim stated that other companies have done this and it worked. This will focus people on a new hashtag, you draw away the one that is causing problems and people are less inclined to throw in their own witty insults but this could take a few days for the old hashtag to peter out. The second option that was presented was that the company could save the contest and let this whole thing blow over. Or even end the contest all together. This option may make the company come off looking like the arrogant jerks everyone perceives them to be. And the last option that was presented was to not jump the gun due to the positive tweets they received from some customers. If they decided to cancel the contest, you may alienate the people who sent in genuine entries and are hoping for those round-trip tickets. It may be better to ignore the bashes and focus on the good publicity their receiving. With all these ideas, the four executives were not satisfied with these options. This has come down to the four company executives to make a decision based on risk vs reward in this particular situation and make a detailed chart of the pros vs cons of each option they presented but looking at the short term and long term effects of each.

Situation Assessment

Strengths

Opportunities

Large portion of tweets were positive

Andrea seems to be competent and experienced to handle challenges

Andrea has been anticipating and prepared for the negative publicity that could arise

Advocate to customers about the concern and welfare of each customer’s safety

Do not apologize for the grounded airplanes because of their greatest concern of the company being the well-being of each passenger

Evaluate the grounds crews payroll and the safety procedures

Directly respond to each negative tweet by stating that they have cancelled and delayed flights for the safety of the passengers

Weaknesses