Brand Disasters - United Airlines
The #1 Brand Disaster of the Decade
Every brand will eventually face a crisis. It’s unavoidable, considering all the opportunities available for brands to publicly screw up and have their mistakes memorialized on social media for eternity.
The question isn't whether your brand will experience controversy. It's how you'll react when it occurs. The key to enduring a brand disaster is to act in accordance with your brand promise.
United Airlines screwed this up completely. When faced with a crisis, United blundered every step of their response. It was such a catastrophe, that I still think of it as the #1 brand disaster of the last decade. Let's review what happened and see how they could have handled it differently.
The Bump Heard Round the World
On April 9, 2017, United overbooked flight 3411 from Chicago to Louisville. After passengers boarded, a flight attendant announced that since the flight was overbooked, they needed four passengers to give up their seats. Nobody volunteered. United then randomly selected four passengers. Three of the four agreed to go, but the fourth, a medical doctor from Louisville named David Dao, refused to leave, saying that he had to be at the hospital in the morning.
The United agent called uniformed security officers to escort Dr. Dao off the plane. He still refused. Then, three security agents grabbed Dr. Dao and forcibly removed him from his seat which resulted in a broken nose, concussion, and two missing teeth. His shirt pulled up as he was dragged from the plane, bleeding and unconscious.
Dozens of passengers recorded the entire incident and shared it on social media. Within minutes it had hit my inbox (as well as millions of others) and was quickly picked up by news sites. An immediate backlash against United followed. Their crisis was fully underway.
United We Stumble
The very first mistake United made (you know, after they assaulted a passenger) was to delay their response. Rather than issuing an immediate apology, United let the issue fester until the next day. Their official, tone-deaf statement took no responsibility for the mistreatment of the passenger, and made only a cursory general apology for “the overbook situation.”
When CEO Oscar Munoz finally responded, he did so with a Tweet (another mistake) and again failed to mention and apologize for the horrible mistreatment of Dr. Dao (mistake again). You’d think things couldn’t get any worse for United, right? Wrong – instead, Munoz sent an internal letter to United employees where he engaged in victim-blaming. An employee leaked the letter to the press which only added fuel to the fire.
The world united in outrage over the mishandling of the incident. Antagonistic hashtags dominated Twitter (”#UnfriendlySkies, #BoycottUnited”), and the company lost $350 million in market value in a single day. Apparently, the share price drop was the catalyst Munoz needed – he finally issued a proper statement, taking full responsibility and apologizing for mistreating a passenger.
Lessons Learned from A Flying Fiasco
United made mistake after mistake here, beginning with their initial response. CEO Oscar Munoz should have immediately responded with a heartfelt, on-camera apology addressing the incident, taking responsibility, and outlining a specific plan to prevent future incidents. Also, they insensitively used Twitter to issue a 140-character apology composed entirely by lawyers. They missed the opportunity to control the conversation, and then they flubbed every chance they had to correct the narrative.
I see two big lessons here. One, when a crisis occurs, if you don’t control the narrative, then your audience will. United let the public control the narrative about their brand, which became, “United Airlines doesn’t just hate their customers. They physically abuse them.”
The second lesson is about the culture of United Airlines, and their broken brand promise - to be “the most caring airline in the world.” Seriously! It was all over press releases, marketing materials, and featured on the website. And it was revealed to be complete hypocrisy.
If you’re promoting yourself as “the most caring airline in the world,” then those brand values need to be driven into every role at the company. You have to push that promise and hold people accountable for delivering on that promise. The only way to do that is by enabling your employees (and vendors, and suppliers, and contractors) to deliver on your brand promise.
Otherwise, you’ll end up on my “Top Brand Disasters” list and I’ll have to write a blog about you.