‘The world’s favourite airline’ is experiencing a turbulent week.

First it was announced that BA is now the worst performing of all Europe’s major airlines, then a few days later it was hit with a £270 million fine for price fixing with Virgin. And today – just when they thought the nosedive was over and a spin had been averted – the Times (London) reports that BA attempted to conceal how many bags it was losing after discovering that it had come bottom of an industry league table. BA obviously doesn’t like to spin in the air – or with the media on the ground it seems.

BA, keeping its customers in the dark

Embarrassed by the findings, BA contacted the air passenger watchdog, the Association of European Airlines (AEA), and ordered it not to release the results of its quarterly survey of baggage delays and punctuality. In other words: stop the usual practice of issuing a press release to announce survey results. But that wasn’t enough for BA. They also wanted the figures to be placed on an obscure part of the AEA website, where they would be difficult to find. The AEA were outraged and neither of these requests got off the ground.

BA‘s first mistake was its attempt to cover-up negative news – sometimes it works, but there is always the threat that it will fly back right at you only to crash and burn into a smouldering wreck – it isn’t that bad for BA, but it is bad.  

The second mistake is even more school-boyish for a company which no doubt spends millions on its PR efforts worldwide: Denial. When contacted (by the Times I assume) a BA spokesperson said: “It’s got nothing to do with us whatsoever.” It later admitted that it had made a complaint to the AEA and stated that fellow member airlines had failed to report how many bags they had lost. Maybe this reminds my mother of when I was a baby, throwing my toy planes out of my pram – not the kind of memories a multi-billion pound airline should be evoking.  

So what should have been the appropriate response from the ‘world’s favourite airline’? First, BA should have recognised the report with a hint of concern yet focusing on the positives – releasing a statement along the lines of:  

British Airways is constantly striving to improve baggage services for our customers. We accept that there are areas for improvement; the reason why we take part in these kinds of surveys is because we are firmly committed to making our services for our valued customers even better.

And even better still, giving the media some actual examples of what exactly they are doing on the ground to improve the situation could have been included in the statement – turning negatives into positives is the only way to fly in this case.  

Instead, it was BA’s competitors who semi-cruised through a potentially turbulent week with the media. A spokesman for Lufthansa, another senior AEA member, said: “We would never seek to hide these figures. We accept that sometimes we will be seen to do badly but you can’t always have the sunny side of life.” The PR Herr’s and Frau’s at Lufthansa are no doubt nursing hangovers this Saturday morning after drinking a few too many Doppelbock’s in celebration. It’s a result from a bad day.  

We of course don’t know why BA behaved so amateur in dealing with this report – if any of its PR gurus read this they would learn nothing new. It’s actually PR common sense for anyone working in communications. This makes me wonder if the big-wigs at BA really understand that PR isn’t just about allocating it a budget. You need to listen to what the communication guys are saying, if you don’t, the potential consequences are disastrous. 

I guess the calls of “Cover-ups don’t fly!” got lost somewhere in between economy and first-class. Maybe it’s time BA top-brass bumped the PR guys up – that’s if they don’t want their half-eaten prawn sandwiches polishing their shoes as they nosedive into yet another crisis.

On Sunday the New York Times, beaten by a similar Washington Post article on July 14, reported that Ogilvy Public Relations has been enlisted to help the Chinese government spin positive messages to American and Chinese consumers following a tumultuous six months where cardboard filled baozi (steamed dumplings) to toxic-toothpaste have made more of an impression on their ears than in their mouths.

 With a heightened sense of economic realpolitik, consumers on both sides of the Pacific aren’t of course the only group the Chinese government wishes to influence: Every US product quality enforcement agency and their EU counterparts have been hot on the heels of the Chinese – so much so, it seems less adversarial responses have been replaced by a more open, communicative approach. The Washington Post reported that Edelman Public Relations and Capitol Hill lobbying groups are also assisting the Chinese government produce articulate, positive responses when dealing with the relentless product-quality scandals hitting China this year.

So how are the Western PR gurus advising their new, appreciative clients from the ‘wild, wild east’, as one American political commentator put it. Be open, honest and stage the press conferences to show the world you mean business is one recommendation the Chinese have taken on board. Blow your own trumpet, so to speak. And July was very loud indeed, almost deafening by previous Chinese standards. The government has trumpeted its offer of large rewards to citizens who report illegal practices in the food industry. China’s quality inspectors have also been more vocal about their promises to improve quarterly reports to the EU about consumer product safety. Only last week, the world learnt about how co-operation with the FBI led to the seizure of pirated Microsoft and Symantec software worth an estimated $500 million. The list goes on.

It was good to read the opinions of Dan Harris (he runs the popular China Law Blog) in the Washington Post article – he believes, ‘the problem is so massive and so deep-seated that I think it’s going to take huge amounts of money and a very long time for it to be cleaned up’. And he is probably right. The other thing of course is that for these clean-up acts to work, having your new communications strategy in your pack is one thing, but sticking to it – and to keep your PR ace card working for you – you have to be consistent and persistent with your message. Let’s see what happens in the second half of 2007, it’s going to be a fascinating game of cards folks.

As I waded through my regular news portals covering the latest flood reports from the UK – and China – it was interesting to see how the respective leaders from both countries are getting their feet wet and supporting the relief efforts. Even more interesting is their attire.

First there is Gordon Brown – whether it’s riding the storm in PMQ’s;

 Serving aces past 13 year-old secondary school students;

 Or indeed visiting flooded homes in Gloucestershire;

the customary tailored dark suit, white shirt and polished black shoes seems to be the only way for Gordon to step outside onto Downing Street’s July puddles  (to give him some credit, a pink tie was once bravely worn as opposed to his favoured blue). A search on Google images reveals just two occasions when he was clad in anything else: a picture with his wife, Sarah, and their newly born daughter; and a visit to British troops serving in Iraq – I assume too hot even for his all-purpose-all-weather suit in the midday desert heat. A white shirt, top-button open, was his attire on both those occasions by the way.

Who is the President of China? Yes, that’s right. Hu is the President of China. And it is obvious that Mr Hu – and his red army of advisors – are more aware than Gordon of conveying the right image, and thus message, to the people of the now very wet land. I also assume and hope his sense of humour is better than mine.

We know George Bush likes a wisecrack or two, and often makes a few gaffes to the delight of the hovering media – but he knows, like Hu, that with the top-job comes one half of a spacey wardrobe that should be utilised in front of the lens. There was no tailored suit and American flag pin badge when he visited a flooded Pennsylvania in 2004.

If there is one message I want to say to the Browns at Number 10 it has to be this: Time to start sharing the coat hangers Sarah.

Yesterday, an interesting article appeared above the fold on the second page of China’s English language newspaper – the China Daily – regarding urges made by the vice-minister of the State Council Information Office for local governments to be more open and transparent. According to the vice-minister, attempts to block media coverage of negative incidents was “too naïve” and that “blocking bad news” was becoming more difficult, given the wide use of new information technologies and also the central government’s commitment to information transparency.

The reason why a senior official came out with this is of course due to the headline-grabbing brick kiln slave scandal; children were abducted and sold to brickyards in several counties in Shanxi (a province west of Beijing) then forced to labour 14 hours a day without sufficient food. 

Although the local government began taking action in April, officials stayed tight-lipped until it was too late – and headlines such as “Brick Kilns: Where were the authorities?” started grabbing above and below the fold coverage in the national newspapers throughout June, and indeed still are. In terms of the media reaction, the crisis was exacerbated by the fact that the scandal first came to the media’s attention through the parents of the abducted children. Utilizing these ‘new information technologies’ (i.e. the Internet), parents garnered public support by telling their horrific stories and appealed for netizens to sign their online petition. Subsequently, the story was first picked up by local media – the snowball effect (and for good reason) doing the rest.

There is little doubt that even if the local government had been open and transparent from the very beginning back in April national newspapers still would have ordered extra ink by the barrel to cover the story. However, as the vice-minister said, “Had the government kept the media and the public informed, we would have seen a different result on discussion of officials’ accountability.”

This on-going scandal is highlighting the need for Chinese government officials – at all levels – to be media savvy and have the skills to deal with the media in a crisis. It’s encouraging that the vice-minister alluded to some key crisis management skills (communicate early, frequently and actively engage the media) that should be utilized in the future. Furthermore, his admission that ‘bad news’ is becoming harder to control, could lead to more openness and transparency of government top to bottom.

However, no matter how fluffy this all sounds, talk of open and transparent government will have no effect on how the ‘sensitive’ issues are discussed. Well, they aren’t discussed at all actually.  There is nothing transparent about the events of ’89; the Government’s subsequent silence is why nearly 18 years on it is still hotly talked about in Western media. Perhaps the vice-minister could take some advice from his own words: “It has been repeatedly proved ‘information blockage’ is like walking into a dead end.” Somehow, I don’t think that one’s going to make it out of the pipeline – blocked, or unblocked.