Last week someone sent me a link to a piece in the Telegraph which was a complaint letter from a customer to Sir Richard Branson about the food on a Virgin Airways flight to India. You can read it here.
Apparently the letter is “doing the rounds” on the Internet and is being described as the world’s funniest complaint letter. Indeed, it is funny, though a little long.
But then a colleague said the letter was being circulated by Virgin as a “PR stunt” because Virgin comes across well in the final paragraph with Sir Richard speaking to the author to thank him for his constructive tongue-in-cheek email.
Now I don’t know whether Virgin had anything to do with this letter being circulated, but it interests me that it is being discussed as a possibility.
It made me think of that old line about – “no such thing as bad publicity.”
Reading the letter, however, there’s no way I can accept that circulating this letter widely would be good public relations by Virgin. Therefore, I hope that it wasn’t leaked by the airline as a positive move.
That’s mainly because there is, for me, a big difference between public relations and publicity.
I might get fed up writing this during my year as President – and you will probably get bored of reading it – but public relations is a planned and consistent programme of communication between an organisation and its public. It aims to maintain and build an organisation’s reputation with its stakeholders. It is a long term, ongoing project. It is not a short term or cheap shot at fame that has no solid foundation.
There is a place for publicity, and I believe it can be both good and bad, but it is not public relations.
To help explain my point, I would imagine that any well-rounded public relations programme for Virgin Airways, especially as it celebrates its anniversary of taking to the skies, would concentrate on the customer experience. The airline is, rightly, famous for its service both in terms of innovation and consistency of delivery.
Therefore, I can’t believe that deliberately circulating a letter which savages the very quality that you want as the centrepiece of your reputation, would have any place in a planned and consistent programme of good public relations.
Deal with the complaint, deal with it well, and if it becomes public, deal with it well in public. But if the only people who had ever read this letter were Sir Richard and the un-named author, then I can’t help feeling that Virgin’s reputation would have been better served.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly not advocating that companies should always suppress damaging information – especially an airline. But this is not a public safety issue; it is someone not enjoying their in-flight meal.
And I certainly wouldn’t feel the need to share this bad experience with the world.
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