United Airlines Scandal and the Rise of Social Media Essay

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United Airlines: Dragging Through Crisis Management

A recent scandal at United Airlines involving a routine overbooking of a flight and a non-routine removal of a passenger after none volunteered to de-board has thrust United into a rather negative spotlight. Its image has been tarred by widespread public disapproval thanks to social media, and the company's settlement with the customer out of court has done little to polish the airline's image. Its attempt to contain the crisis has proved futile and has raised the question: Are companies desensitizing customer service by relying too heavily on crisis management via public relations? From the look of it, it appears that United would do well to re-focus its attention on vitalizing its customer service approach instead of relying on its PR team to clean up the mess. This paper will discuss the issue of United's crisis management approach and examine another possible approach that could better serve as a solution to the underlying issues.

The PR Problem

The problem with relying on a PR team to address crises in the Digital Era is that it has become virtually impossible to contain a story and control a narrative once it has been picked up by social media. Traditional news outlets used to be the go-to source for information but the Internet has changed all of that. Today, any individual can make and spread news via social media feeds such as Twitter, Facebook. Strategic communications has been revealed to be a two-way street: consumers now have access to their own form of strategic communications (social media) just as businesses have their own (public relations teams). The result is a battle of communications, and -- as the recent case shows involving the physically assaulted doctor, removed for not giving up his seat when United overbooked the flights -- the consumer has far more power to control a narrative today via social media than the business has via PR.

Strategic Communications and Marketing vs. Social Media

United has attempted to rely on strategic communications and marketing to construct a positive image of itself for public consumption. This type of strategy is effective only so long as the consumer has no other information or access to information that tells a different story. As Lamb (2009) points out, today's consumers are the most informed in all of history.

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Before they make a single decision about purchasing, they can research a company quickly over the Internet, compare prices, look at what others have said about the company on online reviews, and make a decision based on the evidence they obtain. Strategic communications and marketing are barely a blip in the great flood of information that consumers can pull up. United's use of PR and attempt to market its way out of a scandal that makes the customer feel extremely uneasy about flying with the airline is like trying to counter an army with a bobby pin. The consumer is too well-aware. The only hope that United has, really, is that consumers have a short memory. This in fact may be the case, as studies have shown that social media "news" has shortened the news cycle exponentially and shortened memory spans as well (Newman, 2010; Von Muhlen, Ohno-Machado, 2012). However, this is a shallow hope and does not reflect the realities that exist in the light of new technology and new media and the way in which individuals can share stories of human rights issues that impact us all.

Underlying Issues

If United's employees and management teams were making more of a conscious effort to solve problems (such as overbooking) and to treat customers as they themselves would like to be treated, would United even have such a PR problem? One may point to social media as a major factor in how companies find it difficult to address stories that spiral out of control thanks to viral videos and instant sharing of information among social media users around the world. However, if the company itself were better at handling the types of issues that serve as the cause for such social media fodder in the first place, perhaps the PR problem would not be so enormous. Perhaps, United's problem is really a problem of organizational culture -- i.e., a sociological problem.

The Sociological Solution

As Southwest Airlines and Virgin Airlines have both shown, putting people before profits is the best way to actually create a successful workplace culture (Gallo, 2013; Srinivasan, 2014). It shows the workers that they are valued and gives them a feeling of satisfaction -- a desire to want to be on….....

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