London Luton Airport
Luton Airport, just north of London, is the sixth busiest international airport in the UK, serving almost 9.7 million passengers in 2013. Planes fly from Luton to European and North African Destinations. (Wikipedia, 2014)
The Luton Airport Authority have an active marketing department, and use social media extensively, with Facebook, Twitter and a variety of other platforms regularly updated.
Misuse of Social Technology
On March 14th 2013 Luton Airport had an unfortunate episode of accidental misuse of their social technology.
2013 was an especially cold year in the UK, with the country still experiencing snow and ice in March. Airline passengers are naturally concerned about whether or not flights will be running in such conditions, and in an effort to reassure passengers that the airport had the situation in control, an employee put a light hearted Facebook post of an plane that had slid off the tarmac in Chicago in 2005 with the text ““Because we are such a super airport....this is what we prevent you from when it snows......Weeeee :)”
What the employee had not realised was that the Chicago plane had run off the runway, into traffic, and killed a six year old boy.
Facebook followers were incensed.
Immediate Consequences.
The direct and immediate consequence of this mistake was the Facebook followers broadcast their discontent.
The next consequence was the story reaching the press, with emotive negative headlines such as:
This site classifies the Luton Airport Facebook episode as a case of “bad judgement”, rather than bad execution, bad strategy or bad luck.
“Clearly, this is another example of lack of training. Perhaps, in this case the bad judgement also reflects a misguided social media policy in which content is posted without an approval process. In certain industries, it is wise to implement internal checks and balances. The added layer of approval can prevent such PR nightmares as this one.”
Techniques to avoid social technology misuse
I liked the blog “What Not to Do: Common Social Media Strategy Mistakes” which provides the following advice.
Some other relevant advice is included under the following headings in “Don't Make These Social-Media Blunders That Businesses Keep Repeating”.
“A spokesperson for Luton Airport told ITV: said We apologise unreservedly. The post was wholly unacceptable and it will never happen again. "We have social media guidelines that clearly outline what is acceptable. However in this instance a new, over-enthusiastic member of our support team made an honest but misguided mistake and clearly stepped over the line." (Huffington )
In his publication “A Practical Perspective of Information Ethics”, Rogerson , provides eight ethical principles for a computer professional.
Longer term Consequences of this event
The social media world agrees that this incident was not good, and it appears on numerous “worse Social media mistakes” lists, and is now the topic of my blog, but did it have any negative consequences for the company itself?
This, of course, is difficult to measure quantitatively, but the annual statistics for “number of passengers” through the airport actually show a slight increase for the year of this event. (Wikipedia,2014), suggesting no adverse impact on business as usual. The summary of “London Luton Airport in the media” does not give the incident a mention.
In investigating this case I was
assured that the company did in fact have a robust social media strategy, and my
conclusion is therefore that whilst this was not a good PR incident for the
brand, it was handled in a timely and appropriate manner, and the potential
damage to the business itself was minimised.
What do you think?
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| From the London Luton Airport Site |
Luton Airport, just north of London, is the sixth busiest international airport in the UK, serving almost 9.7 million passengers in 2013. Planes fly from Luton to European and North African Destinations. (Wikipedia, 2014)
The Luton Airport Authority have an active marketing department, and use social media extensively, with Facebook, Twitter and a variety of other platforms regularly updated.
Misuse of Social Technology
On March 14th 2013 Luton Airport had an unfortunate episode of accidental misuse of their social technology.
2013 was an especially cold year in the UK, with the country still experiencing snow and ice in March. Airline passengers are naturally concerned about whether or not flights will be running in such conditions, and in an effort to reassure passengers that the airport had the situation in control, an employee put a light hearted Facebook post of an plane that had slid off the tarmac in Chicago in 2005 with the text ““Because we are such a super airport....this is what we prevent you from when it snows......Weeeee :)”
What the employee had not realised was that the Chicago plane had run off the runway, into traffic, and killed a six year old boy.
Facebook followers were incensed.
 |
| The image that was posted on Luton Airport's Facebook site on Msrch 14th 2013 |
Immediate Consequences.
The direct and immediate consequence of this mistake was the Facebook followers broadcast their discontent.
The next consequence was the story reaching the press, with emotive negative headlines such as:
“Plane insensitive: Luton Airport
slammed for using fatal crash picture in Facebook publicity” from the Daily Mirror
“Luton Airport Facebook Fail”, The Fresh Egg Blog
This then led to the episode
being included in sites such as “5 big Social Media
Fails of 2013 (and What We Learned)”. “Luton Airport Facebook Fail”, The Fresh Egg Blog
This site classifies the Luton Airport Facebook episode as a case of “bad judgement”, rather than bad execution, bad strategy or bad luck.
“Clearly, this is another example of lack of training. Perhaps, in this case the bad judgement also reflects a misguided social media policy in which content is posted without an approval process. In certain industries, it is wise to implement internal checks and balances. The added layer of approval can prevent such PR nightmares as this one.”
Techniques to avoid social technology misuse
I liked the blog “What Not to Do: Common Social Media Strategy Mistakes” which provides the following advice.
1.
Avoid
Like-baiting, the practice of using provocative headlines to stir up social
attention
2.
Do not buy
likes and followers. Apparently it is possible to buy followers, but this blog
warns against doing this, as the quality of your audience and real impact is
reduced
3.
Do not post
too much. An interesting suggestion that you may give your followers post
fatigue.
4.
Do not
ignore social media ROI (Return on Investment)
5.
Only using
social media to advertise is a mistake
6.
Do not
delete negative comments
7.
Ensure you
keep up to speed with how social media is changing
On reflection, I consider that
the Luton Airport staff were guilty of the first mistake only, in that they
were so intent on posting a provocative headline that they didn't take the time
to properly check what they were posting.Some other relevant advice is included under the following headings in “Don't Make These Social-Media Blunders That Businesses Keep Repeating”.
1.
Mixing up accounts, stating how easy it can
be to accidently post as personal message to a company account, and vice versa.
Certainly something to be aware of, but not relevant to the Luton Airport case
study.
2.
Social Media never sleeps. This point notes
how important it is for companies who sign up to social media to ensure they
have at a minimum a 24 hour watch on the social chatter, as responding after 8
hours to a twitter complaint is like three months in social-web time, and what
might have been a small issue can become a viral headline.
3.
Automating everything. The advice here is
that, while it is possible for a company to set up automation to reply to
scheduled posts, replying to certain messages and following other accounts that
it is still important to have human oversight of what is happening, especially
when a crisis occurs.
4.
Leap before looking. The mistake alluded to
here is using hashtags without first checking to see how it might already be
being used, or without checking as to what else is happening in the news to
check the implications.
5.
Loose posts sink ships, advising on the
importance of a social media policy to establish guideline for employee posts.
I don’t consider that the Luton employees made these mistakes. In fact,
they responded quickly and appropriately to the situation, by removing the
offensive post and posting an apology. “A spokesperson for Luton Airport told ITV: said We apologise unreservedly. The post was wholly unacceptable and it will never happen again. "We have social media guidelines that clearly outline what is acceptable. However in this instance a new, over-enthusiastic member of our support team made an honest but misguided mistake and clearly stepped over the line." (Huffington )
In his publication “A Practical Perspective of Information Ethics”, Rogerson , provides eight ethical principles for a computer professional.
1.
Honour - is
the action considered beyond reproach?
2.
Honesty -
will the action violate any explicit or implicit agreement or trust?
3.
Bias - are
there any external considerations that may bias the action to be taken?
4.
Professional
Adequacy - is the action within the limits of capability?
5.
Due care -
is the action to be exposed to the best possible quality assurance standards?
6.
Fairness -
are all stakeholders’ views considered with regard to the action?
7.
Consideration
of social cost - is the appropriate accountability and responsibility accepted
with respect to this action?
8.
Effective and efficient action - is the action
suitable, given the objectives set, and is it to be completed using the least
expenditure of resources?
In this case, I consider that the
Luton Airport Authority acted according to all principle, excepting that of 5. Due
Care. If there had been a more rigorous quality assurance process in place the
offensive image may never have been posted. The social media world agrees that this incident was not good, and it appears on numerous “worse Social media mistakes” lists, and is now the topic of my blog, but did it have any negative consequences for the company itself?
This, of course, is difficult to measure quantitatively, but the annual statistics for “number of passengers” through the airport actually show a slight increase for the year of this event. (Wikipedia,2014), suggesting no adverse impact on business as usual. The summary of “London Luton Airport in the media” does not give the incident a mention.
 |
I consider this an interesting case study
of the misuse in social media, in that an inexperienced staff member posted an
image without checking the story behind the image. An easy mistake to make, but
one with huge consequences in terms of the negative publicity for the company.
What do you think?
Interesting Sue. Many businesses had get into trouble for releasing posts and tweets seen as insensitive. It's important to implement social media policies to avoid this kind of incidents. This week I wrote about another incident on social media which entailed legal actions http://languageinhouse.com/seafolly-copyright-claims/
ReplyDeleteThanks Giannina,
DeleteThe trouble is, that it can be so easy to accidently post something that offends someone. I agree a social media policy can help.
Great post Sue. What a mistake for the employee to make. Ouch! I agree that this was not an intentional action, just an oversight of fact checking before posting.Sometimes having an approval process for communications can slow down processes, so it all needs balance.
ReplyDeleteI wrote about an employee using a company twitter handle to share their views:
http://wendygorsuch.wordpress.com/2014/09/19/hmv-you-wouldnt-tweet-about-it/
Hi Wendy, I like your comment on how an approval process can slow down processes, and needing balance, because I agree this is a really difficult area. After all, the whole idea of social media is that it's very timely.
DeleteGreat post Sue. I feel sad for the employee who made the comment. Often these comments are uniformed, unintended, and created on a whim. How effective do you think policies and rules might be in these sorts of situations? It is like telling someone not to dive into the shallow end of a pool...some one ends up doing it unintentionally, uninformed and on a whim - sometimes ending in disaster.
ReplyDeleteLike you said, in these circumstances, having a robust social media monitoring strategy may minimize or stop any damage.
Really informative article Sue, although the points you make to avoid misuse sound simple, it would prevent a lot of these mistakes from happening.
ReplyDeleteIt is unbelievable how people misuse social technologies even when lives are at stake or even lost. I have seen people take selfies with people committing suicide in the background - Due Care? There needs to a bigger punishment.
ReplyDelete