Originally Posted by
Land-of-Miles
OK trying to look at this from a neutral standpoint having already expressed my own opinion do you really think the timing is right for this sort of brandwashing ad? Surely effective advertising should be the culmination of change not the start of it otherwise you risk raising expectations which cannot be satisfied. I think it is fairly safe to say that BA complaints have been on a rising trend (if they are not already at an all time high). How do you think those customers who have had bad experiences will react to this? It comes across to me (oops I just cannot stop opinions interfering with my objective thought process, so sorry), as both laughable and insulting.
There is a legitimate purpose in raising awareness and emotional affinity with the BA brand, but a more sensible business strategy might have been to do this once solutions have been found to current problems and all complaints addressed within a reasonable timescale rather than in the midst of a PR disaster.
The old maxim that when you are in a hole you stop digging seems rather apt.
I can see the point that you are making and I rather think that the ad would have been better aired in a few months once CR have sorted the last of the claims from the major outage that resulted in so many bags being mishandled.
Originally Posted by
BearX220
Perhaps they should shoot another one in which actual BA uniformed staff deliver real peoples' long-missing baggage to their front doors.
Which I suppose is the response Land of Miles was warning of.
I think that stepping back and away from the emotion, BA handle in the region of 80,000 to 100,000 pax a day world wide and during the T4 problems 20,000 bags were lost. Even allowing for other usual issues that still leaves thousands and thousands of customers who did not share a negative experience and many thousands more who did not fly at all over that period. I suppose that the marketing people decided that there are enough people with a positive impression of the BA brand that the ad was okay to run.