Not So Fast …
Earlier this week, we discussed JetBlue’s silence in the wake of the Steven Slater incident. Turns out maybe there was more of a social-media method behind the company’s measured response. Charlie Kondek, MS&L Digital’s director of new media relations, takes a closer look.
There’s a great piece on Bulldog Reporter by JetBlue’s Director of Corporate Communications, Jenny Dervin, on how the company is navigating its recent crisis. Last week, one of JetBlue’s flight attendants fulfilled every working stiff’s fantasy of telling off his customers and walking off the job site – in this case, grabbing a beer and sliding down the airplane chute! Dervin nicely recaps both the praise and criticisms of JetBlue’s PR response and reveals the company’s strategy before ending with a request from feedback from the corp comm community at large.
Applause for Dervin and Bulldog Reporter, and I’d add this is required reading for anyone in our industry. Weightier minds than mine with more experience than I have in crisis PR would better serve this topic but my one quibble with JetBlue’s performance so far is that they should have moved quicker, something Dervin admits. Crisis 101 for social media teaches us that since news is real time companies should issue a statement immediately, even if it’s only a statement that says they can reveal nothing pending an investigation and that a more detailed statement is forthcoming. Maybe another lesson is that since air travel is an industry fraught with emotions the company should have had a faster response time in place – although who could have predicted this?
I gotta admit, grabbing the beer was a nice touch.
- Date: 08.19.2010
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