About a month ago, a breaking news occupied the front page of every media. “Malaysia MH370” became the top search keywords in every social media platform.
With more than 200 passengers and crews, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 had finally been confirmed that already crushed. However, during the 17 days of anxious waiting, the public relations of Malaysia was totally made the public annoying and disappointing. Those kinds of faulty crisis management not only affected the Airline’s business, but also had large negative effects to their country’s economy. After all, no one can be absolutely avoided any crisis, but the reaction when facing the crisis may be determine the future of the party.
The crisis management of Malaysia Airlines can be regarded as a fatal failure. Malaysia Airlines violated many aspects of the basic principles of crisis management, including rapid response, timely disclosure of information, responsible, honest communication, respect for the right to information and so on. MAS issued the message after five hours of the flight lost contacting. And within two days of announcement, they remained an “unclear” prevaricate attitude. After China took over search and rescue matters, the MAS just need response for the family room and board passengers. However, Malaysia Airlines also had an Oolong arrangement about “Only four families vouchers for each passenger, regardless of the rest of the family”. Their cold blooded and unreasonable reactions lead to more offensive. The failure public relations crisis had not only a dragged down the corporate brand image, but also influenced the country’s tourism industry badly.
Crisis management once been regarded as a sealed, modesty and even prevarication commercial methods, but from individuals, businesses, institutions to industries and even regions, all of them need a basic knowledge of public relations crisis management. Ten years ago, the fire caused by lightning in a small valley in Europe, had changed the international mobile phone market of tripod pattern by Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola. After that, Nokia became the dominance of the industry; Ericsson Mobile was acquired by Sony and became a new brand “Sony Ericsson.” The reason is because at the time the fire hit the mobile phone brand vacuum core chip manufacturing plant, only Nokia did a immediately reaction of crisis management. They monopolized the replacement chip production lines, making it impossible to upgrade the core chip rivals a year.
If you absolutely cannot avoid a crisis, the key function of a successful crisis management is at least won’t let the crisis trigger a new crisis.
Sky News interview with Robert Jensen MH370
PR Applause 