IndiGo battles an image crisis: Can airline navigate brand out of trouble?

As passenger ire continues to boil over, can the airline navigate its brand out of trouble?

Brands must learn to embrace insomnia in the age of digital media. Ask IndiGo, the low-cost airline has been on the firing line ever since November  7  when a national TV channel played the video in which at least two staff can be seen manhandling a passenger. It took barely a few seconds for the video to go viral and before the airline could put together its crisis kit, memes, spoofs and advertisements were hitting screens faster than a hurricane.

The airline has since apologised, explained its stand in a seven-page report to the government and dissected the video to tell the story as it really happened on social media. However, the crisis has taken a life beyond the event and #BoycottIndiGo has been trending on Twitter. What must IndiGo do now?

Talk more and listen more — that is the near unanimous view among brand strategists. All this while the airline has spent time building an identity that is cheeky, funny and quick on the repartee. Now, may be a good time for the airline to position itself as being closer to the people it flies. It needs a new strategy says N Chandramouli, brand strategist and author. “I think they need to re-emphasise that the true owners of the IndiGo brand are its fliers,” he says.

The airline should also open up more; it should have done that soon after the event, says brand expert Harish Bijoor. He believes that IndiGo lost a golden chance to make the incident work in its favour. “I have watched big brands becoming conservative about confidentiality. It should have made the incident public and said this is what we did,” says Bijoor.

Transparency helps repair lost trust as other brands have found out under similar circumstances. For instance, Pepsi, Coca Cola, Cadbury (now Mondelez), Nestle were all stung by damaging allegations in the past. While Coke and Pepsi fought back with experts and celebrity ambassadors who put the truth about the brand out in the public domain,  two of the world's most bitter rivals had their CEOs, Sanjiv Gupta of Coca Cola India and Rajeev Bakshi of PepsiCo India, address the media together. Nestle fought the Maggi ban by bringing down its team and ran a series of campaigns on social and traditional media. 

       Timeline of a crisis

• Abusive exchange of words between a passenger and ground staff:An employee records the altercation  
• Different parties present different versions of what happened next; the video of the incident telecast on national television, and social media erupts in outrage
• IndiGo sends out a public apology, but sacks the employee who shot the video:  The government steps in
• President Aditya Ghosh meets  minister of civil aviation, says airline had already apologised to the passenger and hands in an explanatory note
• Flurry of ads, memes, jokes on social media take on the airline, outrage multiplies 
• Social media chatter comes down, but the airline continues to be mentioned in sundry conversations that mock its service and attitude towards passengers   
  
  
  
  
  

Air India put out an ad saying Unbeatable service

 

IndiGo lost valuable time in getting its response out there says Bijoor. “In today’s digital age when everyone forms an opinion instantly it’s very important who speaks first and who speaks the truth first,” he adds. Indian airlines are also caught short in the event of such crises because they have failed to keep in step with the changing flier profile. According to CAPA, a global aviation consultancy firm, India’s domestic air passenger traffic stood at 100 million in 2016 and was behind only the US (719 million) and China (436 million). A sizeable chunk of these are first-time flyers. “These are passengers have a different set of expectation and they demand it more aggressively. Airlines should be more prepared and adapt their service recovery plan according to that,” says Ambi M G Parameswaran, brand strategist and founder, Brand-Building.com.

IndiGo president Aditya Ghosh believes that the company needs to take lesson from such incidents but says it doesn’t need a dramatic course change. “We made a mistake, we apologised, and we took action. What we did is right without anyone asking us to do so. I see this as all part of our experience and as an opportunity to learn and get better, we have carried over a 150 million customers till date and continue to do,” Ghosh told Business Standard. Parameswaran agrees: “They just need to keep quiet and do what they are doing,” he said.

       Disaster zone 2017

• United Airlines: A passenger was dragged off the airplane and the airline was slammed by fliers for its rude and high-handed dealings. The company was not only pilloried on social media, its shares dropped sharply following the incident
• Pepsi: An ad with model Kendall Jenner offering a Pepsi to a police officer in the middle of a street protest led to huge protests that the brand was making a mockery of the Black Lives Matter movement. The ad was pulled out and the company apologised
• Dove: Unilever’s Dove posted a video showing a black woman removing her brown shirt and transforming into a white woman. It was attacked for the racist tone and the ad spread like a virus. The company took down the video and apologised saying it had missed the mark in representing women of colour. It continues to face consumer ire on social media although the initial outrage has died down