Tag Archive for: publicity

Hashtag Highjack – Lessons from the #Qantasluxury Fiasco

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You’ve heard the story of Pandora’s Box: Zeus gives the trinket to Pandora as a gift and tells her never to open it, but curiosity gets the best of Pandora and she does anyway.  In doing so she unleashes untold evils into the world, which can never be put back in the box.

Enter #Qantasluxury, stage left.

Just in case you missed it here’s how it went down. On Tuesday November 22 Qantas kicked off a competition on Twitter to win a set of its first-class pyjamas:

It wasn’t long before #QantasLuxury was the top Twitter trending topic in Australia with over 14,700 mentions. Unfortunately for Qantas almost all of them came with a double helping of either sarcasm or outright anger:

#QantasLuxury is getting from A to B without the plane being grounded or an engine catching fire

#QantasLuxury is a complimentary cheap hotel room because your airline left you stranded in Adelaide, of all places. Adelaide.

#QantasLuxury is a massive executive bonus while your workers starve and your former customers choke

#QantasLuxury is more than 3mins notice that the whole service has been grounded

My #QantasLuxury experience would be no matter what time or duration of the flight a proper meal is served a cookie is not a meal it’s a joke

#QantasLuxury is flights that leave on schedule because Management doesn’t arbitrarily shut down the airline

#QantasLuxury is planes that arrive intact and on time because they’re staffed and maintained by properly paid, Australia-based personnel.

#Qantasluxury is not being told you can apply for refund online & finding out they only refund via a phone that no one answers for 4hrs

And my personal favourite

#Qantasluxury Somewhere inside Qantas HQ a middle aged manager is yelling at a Gen Y social media “expert” to make it stop

So what went wrong and what can we learn from the Qantas Luxury fail.

Like comedy, in social media timing is everything

What’s puzzling is that a consensus could be reached in the Qantas marketing ranks that this was a good idea. Qantas simply should have known to be more cautious about dipping their toe in the murky waters of social media so soon after the grounding of the Qantas fleet in October. Alicia Kennedy of online monitoring service Meltwater puts it beautifully.

“Had the thousands of people who were inconvenienced by the recent lock out moved past the issue?  Were the public ready to talk about the positives of the company yet again? Judging from a social media analysis, the answer is a resounding no .In the three days after the Qantas grounding, the brand received over 37,000 negative social media mentions and that alone should have sent warning signals to Qantas’ social media team.”

Should have, but didn’t.

Any publicity is NOT good publicity

Some observers will swear this was a deliberate ploy from Qantas to re-engage with customers.

Make no mistake, the grounding of the Qantas fleet has tarnished the brand significantly and this gaffe has rubbed salt into an open wound. The once untouchable flying kangaroo has battled a string of issues that have affected customers, then turned around and given them a public platform to publish their grievances for all to see, share and compare. There’s just no up-side to it.

Bad campaigns = bad news

How is it that Australia’s largest airline, with its multimillion dollar marketing budget, couldn’t come up with a better social media campaign than a pair of pyjamas and a self-serving hashtag. The fact is #QantasLuxury was ill conceived to begin with. Toss in the existing negative sentiment and it goes from being a poor campaign to a nightmare one that achieved nothing beyond highlighting a company out of touch with customers.

Respond – especially if you started it

Twitter facilitates conversations which don’t occur in our day-to-day lives and these are often between customers and brands. As in a real-life chat, you can’t always control the direction of the conversation. It’s a two way street, but you can respond, and you must respond if you initiated the dialogue in the first place.

After announcing the competition and being hounded with complaints, Qantas tweeted the following – “Some very creative tweeps out there. Keep the entries coming”, along with the hashtag “QantasWeHearYou”.

They deserve to be commended for this at least.

Even if it will probably be ignored, a considered, empathetic response which reaffirms your core brand values is always best.

Don’t despair and don’t give up

Whether Qantas handled the saga appropriately is an open question, but ultimately what #QantasLuxury does is highlight the importance of taking full ownership of your brand presence online.

If your brand is being trashed on social media, you must address it. If, instead, you disconnected from your social media platforms and simply choose “not to get involved” you will be viewed as silent and uncaring.

Giving up on social media after bad feedback, or even a campaign as poor as #QantasLuxury, is the worst thing you can do.

If you find yourself totally overwhelmed I recommend revisiting Pandora. Re-read the story and you’ll find that after the contents had escaped, one thing remained in the bottom of the box – Hope!

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Media storm of the month – June 2011

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One of the previous month’s biggest stories has been a tragic one – the murder of a Gold Coast police officer Damian Leeding. Shot in the head late in the evening on Sunday May 29, his family then had to make the heartbreaking decision to turn off his life support machine.

The media coverage of the murder and subsequent funeral was extensive with all mainstream print and broadcast media covering the initial reports, the following progress of the officer and then his state funeral on the Gold Coast, attended by thousands.

The sheer scale of the response was huge. The power of the media was used for good as all the major TV stations were asking the public to donate to the Damian Leeding Remembrance Fund for his young family left behind – more than $150,000 has been raised so far, a huge amount for what might have been a small local charitable fund.

Damian had one of the biggest state funerals ever with the public moved to show their support. The event was broadcast live and online and was a topic of much interest on the social networking site Twitter. The Catholic Leader printed the homily delivered at the funeral.

And other brands got in on the act to help out – the police officer’s young son even got to meet the Queensland State of Origin team.

The murder itself exposed issues of police protection – a new taskforce was announced following Damian’s death. There has been a spate of violent crime in the Gold Coast so far in 2011, predominantly linked to drugs and biker gangs. In fact, Damian’s boss was himself injured following a drug raid just weeks after his death.

Trying to make some sense of the increase in crime, the Queensland Police Union has linked it to the global financial crisis.

But as well as the heartbreak for Damian’s family and the tragic loss for his police colleagues, the media storm surrounding the current crime spree on the Gold Coast has further negative implications.

Local politicians have claimed it’s having an effect on education with foreign students cancelling their courses after seeing the recent stories in the news.

The evaluating committee for the 2018 Commonwealth Games, for which the Gold Coast is a contender, have had to make a statement saying that the crimes won’t affect Gold Coast’s chances of hosting, but it’s hard to see how it won’t.

And there are some indications that tourists are cancelling trips. The new CEO of Sunshine Coast Destination Ltd has even said that selling his destination as a safe place to holiday could help them attract the tourists now not visiting the Gold Coast.

If we want to help the Gold Coast now to try and stop these crimes happening we shouldn’t be deserting the area in its hour of need but keep visiting in our droves to keep the tourism and surrounding industry buoyant so that people can have gainful employment and less need for the drugs as a result of despair. It’s a simplistic viewpoint, but something worth considering. The media are doing their job in reporting the facts, but it would be good if they can help with the recovery as well.

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How to write award entries

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Entering awards may be the bane of your life – it always takes longer than you think to write the entry so it’s usually a stressful rush at the last minute. So why bother?

Well, it’s very flattering to be nominated or asked to enter an award; if you get shortlisted or win it’s a fantastic boost for the company and the team; you usually get to go to a great party; it can help with new business; enhance your profile in your industry; give you a great opportunity to generate some publicity – both internally and externally; and the logos look great on the letterhead/ email signature/ website homepage.

Here we give our top five tips for writing award entries and some advice on how to go about finding awards to enter. (But rest assured we can do the hard work for you as well if necessary!)

1)      Enter the right award: This might sound a bit obvious, but award entries take a lot of time and effort so it’s important to make sure that the award you’re planning to enter are worth it and that you genuinely think you have a good chance. Have a look and see what and who has won in previous years, if you can get examples of previous entries to work from do that too, but always make sure you put your own stamp on it. The process of actually entering an award can sometimes cause you to have a really close look at your business, your goals and what you’ve already achieved. The process itself can sometimes be beneficial.

2)      Check the format: Another obvious one, but something that can easily be overlooked – do they want it written in the first or third person? Is there a word limit on the responses? Would it be advantageous to have your entry designed by a graphic designer to give it more impact? Do they want attachments? How do those need to be formatted? Does the entry need to be submitted in a specific format? Does it need to be posted or emailed – this could impact the amount of time you have and how you write it up?

3)      Gather evidence: As well as you telling the judges that you’re great, you deserve the award and how could they possibly give it to anyone else, it’s probably a good idea (and most awards require it) to gather evidence to support your answers. Examples of documents, testimonials from colleagues or clients, presentations, press coverage… whatever fits the bill, make sure you use it to strengthen your case as the future award winning company or individual that you are.

4)      Proof-read: You’ve come this far, you’ve decided which award to enter, you’ve agonised over the words, you’ve edited everything to within an inch of its life and now you’re almost ready to enter (well within the deadline of course) so don’t let a ‘smelling pistake’ or stray apostrophe or speech mark get in your way. It may sound small, but some of these judges are hard people to please!

5)      Be prepared: You may be called upon to have a face-to-face interview as part of the awards process, this could turn out to be the interview of your life. Be prepared so you can enjoy it! Think you might enter a particular award next year, start preparing for it now, if there are particular criteria you need to fulfill what can you do between now and then to make sure you’ve got it covered? Always be one step ahead and you’ll find it much easier when it comes round to the entry writing process.

Where can you find out about awards to enter? There are lots of places to look – try your local Chamber of Commerce, local newspaper and council. Also look at industry bodies and associations, for example in the franchising industry the Franchise Council of Australia runs an annual awards scheme – every year we work drafting and editing entries for clients. Quite often industry and business magazines run awards schemes as well. And have a look to see what your competitors have won before and enter those too. Using a search engine such as Google is a great way to find information or register for a website such as AwardSync, which is a free service that lists awards across the country according to sector.

Good luck!

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Top tips for media interviews

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Ultimately, we recommend any executives who will be undertaking media interviews to undergo professional media training to hone key messages and delivery – it’s you and your company’s reputation on the line after all – but we thought it would be worth sharing just a few pointers to bear in mind if you’ve got a big interview coming up.

1)      Meet deadlines: journalists are busy people and the story they are working on is the most important thing (to them) at that time, respect that by responding to requests in a timely manner, and when a big story breaks make sure you are available.

2)      Preparation is key: never ever wing it. Always try and get a full brief on the questions that will be asked, have your key messages ready to go, try and actually practise an interview with a friend or colleague asking the tricky questions.

3)      Know what you want to say: shape your message(s), work out what you want to say and how you can say it as simply as possible, always avoid jargon and don’t over complicate. Stay on track with your message(s) throughout the interview and learn how to bridge – i.e. when the question doesn’t necessarily cover what you want to say you can add your own extra bits. For example, “It’s important to remember that…”, “Before we get off that topic, let me just add…” etc. Try and think about two or three key ‘take-away’ points you want the journalist/ viewers/ readers to remember.

4)      And how you want to say it: body language and eye contact are important, often (for television and radio) it’s not really what you say its how you say it.

5)      Tell the truth: stick to the facts, distinguish between fact and opinion, if you don’t know the answer to something say so.

6)      Take written information: reporters often need help putting an issue in perspective, so feel free to provide them with written information to highlight the key facts and figures.

7)      Never say “No comment”: if you can’t answer something or choose not to, just give a brief explanation why otherwise it can be a little like a red rag to a bull.

8)      Silence is golden: don’t talk to fill any silences, say what you want to say and then it’s the reporter’s responsibility to keep the interview going.

9)      Nothing is 100% off the record: it’s worth remembering that a journalist is always on the lookout for the next big story, don’t let your ‘off the record’ comment become that; nothing is ever fully off the record.

10)  Get performance reviews: everyone can get better so make sure you review resulting articles or the broadcast coverage and seek comments and feedback from friends and colleagues

Good luck!

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Media Storm of the Month – March 2011

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This is a new regular blog-slot where we look at a news story that has taken off in that month.

March has been awash with controversy and genuine news, from the aftermath of the Christchurch quake to the even more tragic Japanese earthquake and its resulting tsunami, rising death toll and imminent nuclear meltdown. Not to mention the  scandal in the AFL with player manager Ricky Nixon and allegations of misconduct with a 17 year old girl, to Charlie Sheen’s outrageous public outbursts and increasingly weird behaviour to the prospect of war with Libya and more floods in Queensland and New South Wales.

The story we’re going to touch on as a Media storm of the Month though is the story about the YouTube video of the Year 10 Sydney student being bullied by a Year 7 boy. The story broke around the time of the National Day of Action against Bullying and Violence. A video was posted online of a much smaller boy punching another boy in the face and body; after several rounds the larger child suddenly retaliates, lifting the smaller boy off the ground and smashing him into the ground and leaving him to stagger off.

Daily Mail grab: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1368886/Bully-bodyslammed-Casey-Punisher-says-s-sorry-blames-victim.html

Something that should have been sorted out by the school, the boy’s parents and the boys themselves has, thanks to the huge popularity and growth in social media and online networking sites, grown out of all proportion.

There was media outrage at the video and the attack and we now know that the larger Year 10 boy is 15 year old Casey Heynes, who has been bullied most of his school life and considered committing suicide last year, and the bully is 12 year old Ritchard Gale.

Both boys are now part of a media circus with interviews on major TV networks and coverage in all the main newspapers.

It has aired some interesting points and, it can’t be denied, was ‘good timing’ for a national bulling campaign. It has sparked a debate about bullying and violence in schools making other children affected not feel alone. Anti-bullying and children’s help charities such as Headspace, BeyondBlue and Kids helpline have all been able to jump on the bandwagon getting out their messages and contact details for all the other children who might be in need.

But the talk is also about what is it right to do to stand up for yourself? Casey had obviously been provoked and bullied for a long time, but was it right for him to retaliate with such force?

And how about the boy who filmed the whole incident on his mobile phone, shouldn’t he have been reprimanded as well? Should mobile phones be banned from schools all together? What can we do about this apparent rise in ‘cyber’ bullying?

But also, do children need to be protected from the media and journalists? In their desperate quest for ‘exclusives’ and ‘scoops’ the television news shows particularly escalated the issue and have effectively given credence to a schoolboy disagreement by asking ridiculous questions and adding weight to immature thoughts and feelings. Channel 9 even apparently showed Channel 7 interview coverage and claimed it as its own. A story about a schoolboy fight provoking a media battle, what is the media world coming to?

Creating media magic – the importance of appropriate photographs

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One area I have discovered a lot of businesses will overlook is the way their company is visually represented in the print and online media. And I’m not talking about websites, design or logos – I’m referring to photographs.

It never fails to amaze me how much money companies will spend on improving their online presence, or various other aspects of their business, yet quality photographs of staff and products won’t get a second look.

Many regional newspapers, magazines and online sites will only have one or two photographers. These photographers are often freelance photographers (contract) who will only work at the media outlet part-time.

What this means when you are pitching to media is that the chances of a regional/small media outlet setting up a fresh photograph to go with your story, or product, is pretty slim. This doesn’t mean it won’t happen. It just means you are competing with the thousand or so other stories which also need photographs. Editors need to fill space. They also need to meet a quota of stories and have appropriate photographs to go with them.

If you are on a deadline – your photographer is already booked out – and you have a choice between a story with a photo versus a story with no photo the chances are the story with the photo will win out every time.

Of course saying that, the larger media outlets will always want to own copyright and have their own pictures…

If a company does have images for media a lot of the time these images will be old or outdated. You know the ones – the fresh faced CEO who looks about forty but when you meet them in person they are really sixty and look nothing like their official media photograph?

There is nothing the media hates more than a (pr) company sending them pictures to accompany stories which represent their clients -or products – in a falsified manner. Media outlets don’t want old images or ones which look dodgy and outdated. It reflects on the quality of their publication. Media outlets want a variety of quality images which accurately portray whoever or whatever it is they are writing about.

They also don’t want to print the same thing as all of the other media outlets you’ve sent your story to.

It is crucial your brand aligns with images which accurately represent the business products and which fit the overall brand strategy. If you are going to push products, staff and employees of your business in the media its important to make sure they are presented in a way which fits in with the overall marketing strategy of your business. Social media also needs to be addressed in this regard but that is a whole other topic altogether.

Depending on the size of your business and what is being promoted in the media realistically you should be looking at indulging in professional photography shoots at least once a year. If you can’t hire someone it is still easy to update your media images. All it involves is finding an amateur photographer and allocating time and resources to make it happen.

The best part about professional media shoots is that your company will own all of the images afterwards – you can reuse these images in marketing material, or online, as you choose.

Quality photographs are an excellent business tool and will always help to enhance your media coverage.

Claire Kelly – Media Relations Manager, Ignite PR and Marketing