I'm with Raffles on this one. I'm sure someone in marketing or consumer research would be going through this and other sites to look for trends of opnions. This doesn't mean that board directors read these summaries nor that WW spends 4 hrs a day reading every post. It does mean that the 'intelligence' gathered here is likely to be considered as as additional and useful data point. And also likely that FT reactions and sentiments are then tested amongst the general travelling public.

IMO, BA would be negligent if they didn't use FT as an early warning system but that's probably as far as it goes.

As for guerilla marketing tactics, quite a few corporations use them. But given the negative spin on many announcements here which G-BOAC mentioned, I'd be surprised if BA was behind them.