In the middle of March, United Airlines was thrust into the public eye when a Twitter user broadcasted that the airline told two teenage girls that they couldn’t board an aircraft because they were wearing leggings, which apparently was a violation of the company’s dress code for passengers.
The Tweet went viral and led to widespread criticism that the airline was sexist. In the process, critics of the airline flocked to the hashtag #boycottunited. More recently, the forced removal of a doctor from an overbooked flight was broadcast on Facebook, further tarnishing the airline’s image among social media users.
Many brands, of course, have hit rough patches with social media. Those blunders can simply be making embarrassing mistakes when posting new content or failing to respond appropriately to criticism voiced over social media.
In addition, the instances with United Airlines illustrate how social media has given everyone a platform for publishing content that can be damaging to brands. This has increased the need for companies to have well-oiled disaster contingency plans.
Regarding posting mistakes, American Apparel is one of many examples, according to a recent article from Entrepreneur. The clothing company had posted pictures of the 1986 Challenger space shuttle explosion on Tumblr and mistakenly said the images were of fireworks. After receiving widespread criticism, American Apparel issued an apology and explained that the posting was done by an employee who was born after the Challenger accident.
Another Entrepreneur article lists Coca-Cola as another brand that has ruffled feathers. It Tweeted a cartoon with a map of Russia that omitted Kaliningrad, which resulted in citizens of the country using the hashtag #bancocacola to post pictures of soft drinks being poured into their toilets.
Avoiding a black eye on social media platforms isn’t a simple undertaking, but brands can take steps to help minimize the possibility to committing online blunders. One important component of online branding is having a streamlined process for developing appropriate responses to negative developments.
In the United Airlines incident with the teenage girls, the company’s initial response to widespread criticism failed to mention that the girls were traveling on the Pass Travelers program, which provides travel benefits to employees and relative of employees.
United Airlines mistakenly claimed that it has a dress code policy for its travelers, but as criticism mounted, it finally explained that that the dress code applied to Pass Travelers because the company wants its employees to have a professional image when traveling.
If the company had a procedure in place to promptly work with the appropriate executives and quickly formulate a response that would have identified the dress code as applying to employees, it may have minimized the criticism it received over the incident.
In a similar manner, some observers say United Airlines botched its response to the passenger being forced off of a flight. Rather than being frank and acknowledging that the passenger had been injured, the airline tried to downplay the matter, which only resulted in the company being subjected to more criticism online.
If United Airlines had been more forthcoming with its response, some users of social media would have at least acknowledged that the company was being responsible in responding to the problem.
Posting mistakes, of course, are another matter. The examples of American Apparel and Coca-Cola raise the question of what kind of editing processes companies have in place for creating social media content. For example, it’s possible that an older editor may have recognized the Challenger pictures as a space shuttle disaster and saved the company the embarrassment of inaccurately describing the images as fireworks.
In addition to having an editor review the content, it could also make sense to use a collaborative approach that involves have additional employees review content before it goes live. In the case of Coca-Cola, it is possible that having marketing executives in Russia review the cartoon may have prevented the omission of Kaliningrad.