Ebbert handed her stub to the flight attendant and took her seat. But as the crew started the safety announcements she was approached by a safety officer, who asked her to follow him off the plane and onto the connecting skyway. Once outside the officer told her she was dressed in an inappropriate manner and would have to return home to change before she could take her flight.

Ebbert, who was wearing a tight turquoise sweater and white denim mini-skirt, was dumbfounded. ‘What part of my outfit is offensive?’ she asked the attendant. ‘The shirt? The skirt?’ The attendant frowned and said ‘The whole thing.’ The passenger stood her ground and eventually was allowed back on the plane on condition that she pulled down her skirt, pulled up her sweater and wore a blanket over her lap during the journey.

If you work in PR, the beads of sweat have probably already started to form on your forehead; this is, of course, a brand crisis in the making. Ebbert complained first to her mother, then the local radio station and finally the story started to make the national press. The final circle of media hell was achieved when Ebbert, clad in her now-infamous outfit, did the Today show followed by Dr Phil. Then a second woman, Setara Qassim, came forward, claiming she had been forced to fly Southwest wrapped in a blanket after her halter-neck dress was deemed too low-cut by flight attendants.

The problem for Southwest was threefold. First, it had treated two women who were dressed normally by current standards extremely badly. Second, Southwest has a strong reputation in the US as the fun and approachable airline. Its treatment of the women was not just inconsistent but directly contradictory to its positioning. Third, and perhaps worst of all, the airline looked hypocritical. In the 70s it used the strapline ‘Sex sells seats’ and dressed its stewardesses in hotpants that made Ebbert look like Auntie Edna at Christmas. Blogs began to erupt and the media to circle; a strong brand was in trouble.

There is an almost legendary move in marketing called the Tylenol 180. It happens when a company handles a crisis in a manner so consistent with its brand that it not only recovers from the crisis, it builds brand equity and market share as a result. The move was named after painkiller brand Tylenol’s ability to not only survive a tampering incident but emerge more trusted due to the way it handled the situation.

In the nick of time Southwest chief executive Gary Kelly executed this very move. Live on Dr Phil, an upset Ebbert was read a statement that apologized to her and offered her two free tickets. But the manner of the apology won the day. Kelly declared: ‘From a company who really loves PR, touche to you, Kyla. Some have said we’ve gone from wearing our famous hotpants to having hot flashes at Southwest, but nothing could be further from the truth. As we both know, this story has great legs, but the true issue here is that you are a valued customer, and you did not get an adequate apology. Kyla, we could have handled this better, and on behalf of Southwest Airlines, I am truly sorry.’ The same day, Kelly recorded national radio ads announcing extra-low ‘miniskirt’ fares.

Crisis averted, brand restored and sales increased. A fully executed Tylenol 180 is a rare, but beautiful, thing.

The Blake Project Can Help: The Brand Positioning Workshop

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PR is the most under-used and under-rated communication tool. This is largely because most managers believe their products are too mundane to garner media attention. David Blaine’s confinement in a box next to Tower Bridge should initiate a rethink. If a half-naked man doing nothing in an empty box for 44 days can capture hundreds of column inches worldwide, surely anything is possible?

There is nothing supernatural about a slightly unhinged American starving himself in quasi-solitary confinement. What is magical is Blaine’s incredible ability to generate, sustain, and manage a PR campaign – so much so that he provides five strategic lessons for managers contemplating PR as a method for promoting a new product or service.

First, Focus On A Pre-Launch Stage. Blaine spent a whole month promoting his London adventure. He knew a product’s most newsworthy period is, paradoxically, prior to its actual availability. A pre-launch stage builds up the momentum that propels a successful product.

Second, Make The Launch Itself A True Event. Blaine ensured audiences around the world read about or tuned in live as he entered the box. The day your product becomes available must be the biggest day in its history.

Turn that day into one, or preferably more than one, big event and work with the media to ensure immediate consumer awareness of your new offering.

When Southwest Airlines launched direct flights to Memphis, it invited Elvis impersonators to make the first journey. The ensuing images of 200 Elvis lookalikes arriving at Memphis, slightly the worse for wear, guaranteed great awareness.

Third, Make Sure Your PR Campaign Has ‘Legs’. After his internment, Blaine continued to appear in the media thanks to a series of issues, events and stories that ensured nobody forgot where he was or what he was doing.

An angry ex-Beatle, a concerned girlfriend and an egg-throwing woman were all part of a cleverly conceived plan to maintain media interest. Your new product may be big news for you but the secret of PR is finding fresh ways to make it interesting. Celebrity users and product anniversaries are two excellent methods for maintaining media interest.

Fourth, Different Media Require Different Angles Into The Story. The Times reviewed Blaine’s previous exploits, ABC News reported on the unruly behaviour of the British public and contrasted it with respectful American fans, New Scientist reviewed whether a man could survive without sodium for 44 days, and then me, a washed-up marketing professor writes about Blaine’s use of PR. Each contains the same kernel of information, but each is writing a very different story. A single press release is unlikely to be effective.

Each target media should be approached differently.

Finally, don’t try to do this without professional help. While everything may have appeared to be emanating from that little box hovering over the Thames, the HQ for this stunt was actually Manhattan, where PMK, the celebrity PR giant, monitored everything. Now that’s magic.

The Blake Project Can Help: The Brand Positioning Workshop

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Of all the communication tools that a marketer can invest in, public relations is probably the most underrated.

PR is relatively cheap and is a wonderful method of providing information on a brand, while avoiding the clutter that so often reduces advertising impact. Yet it is a relatively minor ingredient in many integrated marketing plans.

The problem with PR is its invisibility. Unlike advertising or the internet there are no glossy prints, 30-second spots or 3-D graphics to point to as justification for the investment. Unlike sales promotions and direct marketing, there is no way of linking the amount invested in communications with that received in the form of increased sales. As a result, PR is often overlooked as an important and economic method of building a brand over time.

The PR industry itself has to accept responsibility for this situation because of the rather fluffy and unaccountable way in which it has promoted itself. In many instances PR agencies have been comfortable accepting a retainer from clients without ever offering any form of evaluation of their activities on behalf of that client.

In other PR agencies, a clippings file featuring all the stories that have run in the media will be offered. This is somewhat akin to a DM agency reviewing its performance by handing the client the mailshot it devised without any data on the impact it had on the target market.

More advanced PR agencies will cite the ‘advertising equivalency’ of the stories that have appeared in the media. This involves adding up the column inches of all the stories that emerged from a PR effort, then multiplying these inches by a mystical number between three and five that represents the fact that editorial has more impact than ads, and then calculating how much it would have cost to achieve the same coverage with advertising.

All of these methods are embarrassingly insufficient. Why should a client care how many stories have been generated or how much it would have cost to achieve the same column inches with ads? The reason for investing in PR, or any other form of marketing communications, is to positively impact the target market in question. It therefore follows that the only way to effectively demonstrate PR impact is not to measure the stimuli, but the effect – a benchmarked shift in consumer behavior.

It is rare for PR to directly impact sales, but it is often the optimum method for generating awareness of a brand or generating positive information about it. These variables can be measured prior to a PR campaign and then measured again at the end of the campaign. Any positive shift can then be attributed to the campaign.

Even better, a forward-thinking agency would dispense of the retainer system and agree with the client some goals for the PR campaign. It would then index its remuneration to its ability to deliver the promised shift.

No PR agency in the land should be allowed to get away with a clippings file or advertising equivalency. It is time for PR professionals to improve their strategic and measurement skills and do justice to the communication tool they have undersold.

A PR storm has been created by mismanagement, strategic circumstances and simple bad luck, and the events of the past few days will blight BA’s brand for years.

British Airways is a Branded House; the best possible brand architecture for employer branding, service businesses and brand strategy. However, one of its key disadvantages is its vulnerability to crisis. When Coca-Cola endured the unmitigated disaster of Dasani, it took one on the nose and scrapped a brand that had been expected to make millions. But no damage was done to Coke, or any of the brands in its portfolio, because of the house of brands structure it operates. In BA’s case, the problems at T5 hit 100% of the brand, all over the world.

Then there is the very specific damage done to BA’s brand equity. At the heart of its positioning are ‘reassurance’ and ‘reliability’, making it peculiarly vulnerable to a debacle like that of T5. In branding terms, there is a world of difference between inconsistency and contradiction. BA is facing the mother of all contradictions, amplified by global media coverage. Fortunately, it was able to scrap a scheduled BBH-created brand-building campaign citing T5 before it broke. This, however, leaves the brand facing a torrent of negative coverage and passenger experiences, without any possible injection of brand equity in the foreseeable future.

BA’s marketing has also become its own worst enemy. Only a few days ago, it was drawing as much attention to T5 as possible, and promoting it as the future of the airline. The image of BA chief Willie Walsh, arms outstretched, gushing, ‘I think it’s great and it’s going to get better. This is a hundred times better than anything else at Heathrow,’ has been etched in the annals of PR blunders. Aside from undermining Walsh and his tenure as chief executive, this has compounded the damage to the brand. It is one thing to get it wrong. It is another to boast about how right you have got it, then get it wrong.

Once the crisis began, BA’s well-prepared crisis-management plan kicked in. But despite the sincere apologies and professional PR job, this was a crisis that could not be managed.

Last weekend was low on news. An African election and a small plane crash could not keep BA out of the headlines, where it stayed for four long days.

The other problem is that the crisis is not over. With 15,000 bags still missing, 10% of flights cancelled and no certainty that problems won’t resurface, there is no way to officially claim the crisis at an end.

A final eviscerating factor is the effect on BA staff. Unlike T5 boss Gareth Kirkwood, who, accompanied by a minder, stepped boldly before the TV cameras to read a statement, then swiftly retreated to his office before he could be asked any questions, BA’s terminal staff had to stay out on duty and in the firing line. The absence of senior managers – or of a suitable response from them – made service staff targets for irate passengers, even as union officials issued a statement pleading with the public not to abuse BA employees.

BA promoted T5 as an opportunity for its staff, but overnight, credibility in its employer brand and management approach have been severely undermined.

All in all, it has been quite a weekend for BA: a fatally undermined chief executive; an employer brand in disarray; a terminal that will remain open for decades blighted at birth; and a British brand broken, in front of a global audience.

30 SECONDS ON … T5 IN QUOTES

– ‘People will be genuinely wowed when they experience Terminal 5.’ BA chief executive Willie Walsh, pre-launch.

– ‘T5 marks the start of a new beginning for Heathrow, BAA and our millions of passengers. It is a living, breathing advertisement for Britain’s ambition.’ Sir Nigel Rudd, chairman, BAA.

– ‘There were 1000 people in line and four people at the desks, taking 20-30 minutes to process each one.’ T5 passenger.

– A BA spokeswoman on the party taking place while the terminal failed: ‘It was not a party – it was a staff communication event. There was a string quartet, doughnuts and food, but we would not describe that as a party. It was designed to update staff and did not impact on the problems at the terminal.’

– ‘I came into BA to make T5 work. I am not going to step down because it didn’t work on day one,’ Willie Walsh, post-launch.

The Blake Project Can Help: The Brand Architecture Workshop

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“Publicity has helped us achieve 5 times the ad value of media placement for every $1 spent. If you consider that the message is coming from a third party (not paid, but endorsed), the additional credibility may result in 10 times the value.”

Proactive publicity can be one of the most powerful and cost effective brand building tools.

The Blake Project Can Help You Create A Brighter Competitive Future In The Jobs To Be Done Workshop

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers