SECOND LEAD
[ clean up ]
Stumbling
Lessons How five big brands messed up—and what they should have done Lambeth hochwaLd The probLem: Customer ConfidenCe takes a hit In the past year or so, American Airlines has been saddled with some grueling challenges. Following the bankruptcy filing of its parent company in November 2011, the airline faced negative publicity surrounding reports of loose seats on its aircraft. “It’s a terrible image to think about being bounced around in flight,” says Bobby Zafarnia, Founder of Praecere Interactive, a Washington DC-based branding firm. This was coupled with a companywide reorganization and labor strife with the airline’s pilots union that caused widespread flight delays and cancellations. “With all of this happening at once, you’ll inevitably have a lot of branding erosion,” he points out. In a case of terrible coincidences, two days after The New York Times published a story on one writer’s rough travel experience flying American—including getting grounded in London and experiencing a seemingly endless tour of Heathrow—the airline’s Facebook page asked users to share their favorite London travel experience. “When a company’s social media channel is disengaged with what’s happening in the general media, that’s a huge disconnect,” Zafarnia says. 58 Intelligent Entrepreneur June 2013
The SoLuTion: When the seats came loose, the airline initially blamed the malfunction on spilled beverages. According to a CNN story that ran in October, an airline spokeswoman said the plane can “get gunked up over time with people spilling sodas, popcorn, coffee or whatever, and that can affect that locking mechanism on the ground that locks the seat to the floor.” This raised even more questions for already skittish flyers. “The main focus should have remained on safety, and efforts to restore the fleet should have been communicated step by step every time a spokesperson spoke about mechanical issues,” Zafarnia says. An American Airlines spokesperson was not available for comment by press time.
BlackBerry’s numbers are evidence of the damage. In 2012, BlackBerry made up just five percent of the global smartphone market, down from 11 percent in 2011, according to IHS iSuppli, a market research firm. A New York Times story from January described the company as being ‘in survival mode’. “While existing customers prefer it, winning new customers away from the competition remains challenging,” Seroka says. “BlackBerry has to sell the fact that they have something better to offer. For example, is it the operating system or the keyboard or the reliability factor? They have to offer customers something they don’t even know they’re looking for—something Apple is great at doing.”
The probLem: Core serviCe interruptions BlackBerry users can be fiercely devoted to their brand. However, that loyalty has been tested in the past year or so as the devices experienced power outages, leaving some without access to the Internet, e-mail and messaging. “The company failed to deliver on the expectation of reliability,” says Scott Seroka of Seroka, a brand development firm in Wisconsin.
The SoLuTion: BlackBerry must convince its customers (and prospective new ones) that the technical difficulties are a thing of the past. “They should come out and say, ‘Here’s how we’ll be reliable from this day on,’” Seroka says. “I don’t think customers are going to be as tolerant of future outages.” The company hopes the BlackBerry 10, introduced in January, will welcome customers with an improved