Crisis Review: Boeing and the 737 MAX Jets
In times of human tragedy, crisis communications needs to be extremely thoughtful and intensively crafted. You definitely don’t want to offend the families of the victims, but you still have to protect the client’s reputation. Additionally, there are bound to be potential lawsuits, so being mindful of those is important as well. As you can see, it’s the most serious and sensitive situation to be in as a crisis PR professional.
I think there are people who feel lawyers and PR professionals lack ethics, which can be far from the truth. With human tragedy, I feel the best representatives are those who are the most empathetic about other people. Personally, I felt Boeing’s response to the crashes could have had more empathy. This means caring about the victims and even the feelings of future passengers.
What I recommend doing is putting yourself in the affected shoes. When the crashes happened, I personally was shook. I remember telling a friend that I would never set my foot on one of those planes. So, in speaking to someone like me, what can Boeing do? Well, I believe they could have shown action. I want to see them do a full independent investigation and an internal investigation.
Another point is putting the lives and potential lives of those who are or may be affected first. I always say that trust is huge for a brand. Given Boeing’s response, I don’t think I would trust them, at least not with these 737’s or any future developed aircraft.
Lastly, a sincere apology and stop there until you have all the facts. One plane crash makes people uneasy, but two with the same aircraft drives understandable panic. I would’ve liked to see Boeing say something on the lines of, “We are so sorry. We really screwed up and although we can’t bring back the lives of dear family members, we are working towards finding out what’s wrong so no one else has to go through something as tragic as this.” Stop here and fix the issue. Then, work on gaining the public’s trust back.
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