What can practitioners learn from Boeing’s crisis communication missteps to avoid putting their organizations’ reputation and credibility on the line?
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| Source: YouTube screenshot |
Setting the scene…
On the 10th of March this year, Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302 crashed shortly after take off killing all 157 passengers on board. This was the second 737 Max to go down in less than four months. In October last year, Lion Air flight 610 crashed just minutes after taking off from Jakarta, Indonesia, killing another 189 people. This sequence of fatal events set off a global crisis for Boeing.
Boeing’s reaction to the crisis
On the day of the plane crash in Ethiopia, Boeing remained reactive, posting only a short four-line statement on the company’s website, in which sympathy for the victims and their families was expressed.
Then, even when country after country grounded the aircraft as starting to question its safety following the two similar accidents, Boeing continued to claim the 737 Max planes were safe for another two days after the crash.
Further, on the 13thof March, only when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) decided to ground the entire global fleet, CEO Muilenburg expressed his condolences in a press release and stated that safety is Boeing’s highest priority and therefore supports the stoppage of 737 Max flights. Nevertheless, he once again maintained he has “full confidence in the safety of the 737 Max.”
Apart from these few statements and the one tweet from Muilenburg (see below), Boeing has been silent for nearly a week. And what did CEO Dennis Muilenburg do? No video message, no interview, nothing. Only a single far-off tweet on the day of the disaster, then silence.
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| Source: Twitter screenshot |
What did Boeing do wrong in handling the 737 Max crisis?
Experts claim that, the main problem with Boeing’s tactic is that its response immediately following the crisis was too defensive, too slow, and too passive, suggesting a lack of openness and liability. Instead of being proactive, providing information and showing face, Boeing issued just a few brief statements, expressing sympathy and was standing by its planes until it was forced to “put safety first” by countries, airlines, and passengers. The airplane manufacturer let individual countries and regulation authorities issue a step-by-step flying ban instead of giving the recommendation itself. It hesitated and didn’t accept any responsibility, putting passengers’ lives in danger and braking stakeholders trust in the company. On top, the face of the company Muilenburg stayed out of sight for more than a week after the crash in Ethiopia. This was a bad, bad idea! Why?
Boeing’s lesson to learn
According to crisis communication scholar Timothy Coombs, ethical managers must first address victims’ physical and psychological concerns before they return their attentions to reputational assets. For instance, Boeing could have told airlines to ground their 737 Max aircrafts until full safety check is done as a way to inform stakeholders of how to protect themselves from the physical threat of a further crisis. Also, to help stakeholders cope with the uncertainty and stress surrounding the crisis, Boeing could have provided more timely, compassionate anddetailed information, about what had just happened and what is being done to prevent similar crises in future.
Besides, even when according to experts, media reframes corporate messages, using more and different news frames, Boeing could have tried to frame the crisis in a way that reputational damage to the organization would be minimized by highlighting certain events or providing a given interpretation of events hoping that at least some of the information will reach the wide public. This would not have let rumors dominate the crisis discourse, increasing uncertainty and worsening the situation.
Moreover, in such a crisis with loss of life, presenting a severe reputational threat to the organization, coupled with a crisis history, Boeing should have adopted a more accommodative strategy instead of being defensive. Muilenburg could have released a press release, or an interview earlier than he did, providing more information personally, expressing concern for the victims, and offering material and/or symbolic forms of aid to victims. And even if it would have been too early to provide an apology and compensation to stakeholders at the stage when evidence for wrongdoing was not there yet, the CEO could have at least tried an alternative strategy, such as reminding stakeholders of all good past work of Boeing to try reducing the negative effects of the crisis as much as possible.
Yet, due to its poor crisis communication, Boeing did nothing else than providing communication experts with the next negative case study for their courses and with a good lesson for how NOT to pilot in a PR storm.
About the author:
Margarita is currently a master student in Communication Science at the University of Amsterdam. Margarita was born in Bulgaria and completed her undergraduate studies both in Germany and the United Kingdom. She is an ambitious person who enjoys challenges and is looking for future career development, growth and success in the desired field of Corporate Communication and Social Media.
Main sources:
Arpan, L. M., & Roskos-Ewoldsen, D. R. (2005). Stealing thunder: Analysis of the effects of proactive disclosure of crisis information. Public Relations Review, 31(3), 425-433. doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2005.05.003
Coombs, W. T. (2007). Protecting organization reputations during a crisis: The development and application of situational crisis communication theory. Corporate Reputation Review, 10(3), 163–176. doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.crr.1550049
Nijkrake, J., Gosselt, J., & Gutteling, J. (2015). Competing frames and tone in corporate communication versus media coverage during a crisis. Public Relations Review, 41(1), 80–88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2014.10.010
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