JetBlue(s): When Brands Betray

If the world needed any further post-9/11 proof that civil aviation has been deprived of its universal glamour, then the JetBlue debacle over the past few days has provided it. The humanistic appeal of flying as a truly godly endeavor, with customers being treated lightly and politely (as so beautifully depicted in Spielberg’s “Catch Me If You Can”), is now gone forever. JetBlue’s fiasco marks the end of yet another era: the end of trust.

I wrote a paper in grad school about JetBlue’s powerful service brand of trust and interviewed the then-VP of Communications as well as a JetBlue flight attendant. Through that experience, I became intrigued by the airline and would probably have felt sorry for Jet Blue now – if I hadn’t witnessed the dilettantic crisis communications and contingency operations myself.

A cab ride to Manhattan

First, my flight from Oakland to JFK on Wednesday got rerouted to Atlantic City, a place that I had only heard of through an ‘Apprentice’ episode and a Bruce Springsteen song. It turned out be distinctively more nondescript than I had expected. After we landed at this “non-JetBlue airport,” as the crew members were eager to point out, we sat on the tarmac for about an hour. The ground handlers were not allowed to handle our luggage, and JetBlue seemed to struggle with arranging a shuttle to our actual destination. The information given by the crew was scarce, and the flight attendants had lost their smile. And the bus didn’t come.

So I eventually teamed up with three other stranded passengers and took a cab to Manhattan (for $400), finding myself in some sort of independent road movie through the Garden State. My newfound travel mates turned out to be nice guys and not serial killers; in fact, one worked for MySpace (and was chained to his laptop for the whole ride), another for Electronic Arts, and the woman from Brooklyn had a heated conversation with our driver about the rights of women in marriage.

When I finally arrived in Manhattan, I heard about another JetBlue plane that had been stuck at the gate for even eight hours. One of my co-workers had been on it along with his two kids, and apparently broke the story by sending an SMS to his mother, a writer for the New York Times. While she, as a food writer, may also have had other reasons to complain about JetBlue, her email blast was short and sour, "Please help my son!,” and led to the unflattering headlines on that night and the following day.

No grace under fire

As my luggage was still in limbo, I called JetBlue’s customer service and received an alarming notice: “We are not able to take your call. Please try again later.” Hmmm, was that the JetBlue I once knew? Anyway, since the web site still indicated my return flight to be on time, I wasn’t too concerned with my travel home a day later. Wrong. After I checked in at JFK a day later, I experienced the full dimensions of the crisis. Thousands of passengers stranded, sleeping between trash, burgers, and pretzels, hundreds of JetBlue staff enervated, cluelessly and hopelessly running around amidst desperate announcements (“did anyone see the flight attendant for flight x to Rochester?”) – the whole terminal was a zoo, and it was surprising that no fights or fires broke out given the sheer volume of human bodies and their frustration. I had a very special deja-vu: I spotted the flight attendant I had interviewed for my paper a few years ago.

And I suddenly realized: The same airline that had revolutionized and, to a certain extent, rescued the airline industry with its no-frills philosophy was now killed by its very value proposition. It turned out that the all-smiley “we are all friends” front-end it boasted had come at the expense of a robust back-end that the airline would have needed to stand up to this week’s logistical challenges. Problems can arise in the volatile aviation space, and you cannot always plan for all contingencies: but you can wing it and you can show grace under fire. JetBlue’s crisis management and communications showed only contempt for its customers.

What to do with the attention?

Still, one must remember that negative PR is never only a mere destruction of reputation capital; it also generates attention value, whose character can be changed and therefore paradoxically become an opportunity to powerfully reshape your brand. So what can JetBlue do? The company has already taken full responsibility, dodging any false apologies, but what’s still missing is a big, dramatic gesture of reconciliation. Maybe JetBlue should be bold and launch a “Speak Up” site where disappointed customers can post videos or blogs of their experiences this week. This may restore the trust and the sense of community that has always been at the heart of the brand. A more traditional idea might be a one-page ad in the New York Times, simply consisting of one word, written in big blue letters: “Sorry.”

Maybe this ad could also tell me where my suitcase is.

Comments

[Emily]

hello how is a going? I am writting a thing for my class about jet blue so I really think that so far through research I would have never thought that this would happen. Knowing that it was not me their I still reflect on what I am now reporting on..... to think that all good info then to find this sight..............HARSH