Offering Advice to JetBlue (and Other PR Blog Jots)

Grading JetBlue's Crisis Management

Crisisblogger

Crisis communications expert Gerald Baron analyzes JetBlue’s crisis management in the wake of its PR nightmare, created last week when the company’s poor response to the icy weather left thousands of travelers stranded.  Baron’s review of the company’s management of the crisis is mixed when he compares it to his gold standards for regaining trust.  He recommends companies accept full responsibility, offer appropriate restitution and agree to make changes to prevent future problems.  He appreciates CEO David Neeleman’s apology but thinks it could have gone further, and notes that it might be too early to tell if JetBlue will be able to recover their reputation.  “What is not completely clear–and needed to be to come out of this with a higher likelihood of regaining credibility and confidence–is whether it will be a better company. Mr. Neeleman and his communication team still have some work to do to convince the public and passengers of that in my opinion.”

JetBlue's CEO Blog May Have Been Useful

/Message

Stowe Boyd joins the JetBlue fray by pointing out that the company’s CEO, who has been making the mea culpa rounds this week via traditional media outlets, actually has a blog.  Boyd wonders why the blog, which has not been updated in three weeks, was not used as a perfect way to communicate with—and perhaps apologize to—JetBlue’s many irate customers in recent days.  Boyd argues that the company’s public relations agony could have been at least somewhat alleviated had they attempted to reach out through the CEO’s blog.  “The company has this one-lung approach -- the sock puppet CEO blog, probably written by the marketing communication people (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) -- and meanwhile the chance to head off the PR disaster is lost because the blog setup is so phony they don't even consider it as a meaningful way to talk to the community of Jetblue users.”

Another Social Media for Dummies Primer

Scobleizer

Several PR bloggers are weighing in this week on what has been deemed the “Social Media Meme,” many in reaction to this post from Robert Scoble that lays out the basic elements of Social Media.  Scoble underlines the importance of audience participation, instant feedback, interaction with other forms of this new media (examples: bloggers posting comments on each other’s blogs, message boards, topic memes, tagging), and syndication as the crucial elements of social media. “When I say “social media” or “new media” I’m talking about Internet media that has the ability to interact with it in some way. IE, not a press release like over on PR Newswire, but something like what we did over on Channel 9 where you could say “Microsoft sucks” right underneath one of my videos.”

Comments

[Paul]

My wife and I made reservations to go to Chicago in September. Since then we've had notice of changes on four different occasions. The final change gave us 10 minutes in order to get from one gate to the other. Upon calling Jet Blue to find out if there were other arrangements that can be made, we were told that the flight had actually been canceled, and that we would have to stay in Long Beach overnight and pick up a connecting flight the following day. The hotel stay would be on our dime.

We were both very disappointed, having heard wonderful things about Jet Blue as an airline and their customer service. Being that this was our first time flying on the airline, I can honestly say we will never bother flying again and would encourage others to do the same.