Brandjack News

By Quentin Langley

While Jet Blue loses control of its message to a silly season story, the airline industry in the UK is roaring back to the seventies with a season of Autumn strikes.  This follows, of course, the Spring strikes.  The difference between the strikes earlier in the year and those still planned is that the first were strikes organised by Unite against BA and the second are strikes organised by Unite against BAA.  BA is the former British Airways and BAA is the former British Airports Authority.  BAA’s principal airport, London Heathrow, is BA’s major hub.

While there is much to be said for BA’s forthright use of the courts to prevent strikes it only goes some way to dealing with the issue.  The threat of strikes is hugely damaging to both businesses.  Many people book their flights weeks or months in advance, and those people will actively avoid airlines and airports which they feel may be threatened with strikes, even if the strikes do not ultimately take place.

Air travel is a business with astonishingly low brand loyalty.  Large numbers of passengers choose their airlines and even their destinations by a mixture of price and convenience.  Only the most regular fliers are willing to pay extra to build up their loyalty points.  People feel even less loyalty to airport brands, though some people are stuck with a very limited choice of convenient airports.

This makes both airlines and airports vulnerable to strikes and the threat of strikes, and should empower the unions.  This is probably why most airline employees enjoy generous salaries and perks for a lifestyle that many people envy and which it is never hard to fill.  But in reputation terms, things are very different.

When BP faces off against Greenpeace, the default position of most of the public and the media is to assume the environmental group is right, or at the very least well-motivated.  Unions command no such automatic support.

While environmental groups have proved masters of brandjacking, there is little evidence of unions doing the same.  The battle with Greenpeace is asymmetric warfare – pitching a corporate army against lightly armed guerillas.  The battle with unions remains, as it was in the seventies, one between big battalions on either side.  Corporations and unions both seem tied to the old way of looking at PR and, as such, neither can gain the decisive advantage in the battle for reputation and brand.

How long before one side masters brandjacking?