Can Proactive PR, Laced with Psychology, Help the Aviation Industry?
By Scott Sobel, MA Media Psychology and Danielle Blevins, Esq.
Emotional reaction to the latest Malaysia Airlines tragedy is destroying the airline’s business and certainly is affecting all other commercial flight. And even before the public had time to digest this tragedy, other plane disasters struck. Earlier this week, the Taiwan TransAsia Airways crashed in stormy weather killing 48 people and injuring 10 others. Soon after, Air Algiers found itself dealing with a plane crash of its own, claiming the lives of 116 people on board. The downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 killed 298 people and the mystery still remains unsolved as to what happened to the airline’s Flight 370, vanishing in March, with 239 people onboard. Is there anything Malaysia Airlines, TransAsia, Air Algiers or the commercial aviation industry can do to fight the perception that air travel is unsafe?
In the case of Malaysia Airlines, the beleaguered carrier is fighting the deadly dual perceptions of either being incompetent or cursed. Reality and statistics do not reinforce those perceptions but that doesn’t really matter when you see ticket sales plummet, the news media searching for stories to drive the nail into the airline’s quickly closing coffin while raising arguably justified questions about the safety of all commercial flight, period. For instance, we noticed this query from a reporter:
Nervous Fliers – XXXTV Network.com
I’m looking for someone who has recently cancelled/postponed/changed a trip (or is thinking about doing so) because they’re nervous about flying.
Is this kind of a query justified? Probably, we all are certainly interested in sensational and emotional stories that speak to our personal safety concerns. The news media reflects that interest in the emotional aspect of stories and doesn’t always balance emotion with facts. If you use your head instead of your heart, however, you might consider this information on Anxieties.com and just go ahead and book that next plane ticket.
Dr. Arnold Barnett, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has done extensive research in the field of commercial flight safety. He found that over the fifteen years between 1975 and 1994, the death risk per flight was one in seven million. This statistic is the probability that someone who randomly selected one of the airline’s flights over the 19-year study period would be killed in route. That means that any time you board a flight on a major carrier in this country, your chance of being in a fatal accident is one in seven million. It doesn’t matter whether you fly once every three years or every day of the year. In fact, based on this incredible safety record, if you did fly every day of your life, probability indicates that it would take you nineteen thousand years before you would succumb to a fatal accident. Nineteen thousand years!
So what should our airline PR practitioner colleagues be doing to combat this out-of-whack perception of flight danger? What should our colleagues at Malaysia Airlines be doing when bad fiscal performance is unmercifully being hammered by their recent, terrible, dual tragedies?
Crisis communications, especially aviation crisis, is a specialty practice of ours at Media & Communications Strategies, Inc. in Washington, D.C., and we consult companies and individuals worldwide. We find the number one way to change perception is to hear and publicize what other human beings think about a subject. Sure, spewing out facts is important, but as mentioned, facts don’t always trump perception. People’s brains are so strongly driven by patterns and emotions perceived and processed in our primal brain’s limbic system. The limbic system triggers a fight or flight autonomic response even before we can think about circumstances and weigh facts in our cerebral cortex.
We have found that since our fears are primal, fashioning a primal or tribal perception-based PR campaign is an effective way to overcome perceptions that may not be based in reality. There is nothing more tribal than hearing and seeing other humans actively being rewarded for their decisions and actions. As a group, we all tend to want to mimic actions that result in rewards. A testimonial-focused PR and image campaign could show happy passengers flying to a vacation spot or having a pleasant conversation with a friendly and authoritative airline pilot. You can certainly imagine any number of positive safe flight related images and messages.
Commonsensically, the airlines should be plastering the media with images showing people enjoying safe flight experiences and hearing from people – testimonials – about their good flight experiences. Of course, those testimonials from travelers should be appropriately mixed with testimonials from aviation experts about relevant flight safety statistics.
This kind of a campaign has to be performed in a way that is respectful of people’s fears and also respectful of the loss of life. You should be prudent when placing commercials, for example, during newscasts or next to print stories that might be reporting tragedy. A calming testimonial campaign can and should be a linchpin for turning the hysterical tide of any type disaster.
The airlines being affected should consider all reasonable public perception campaigns as part of their crisis plans. Air Malaysia has been famously criticized for not having a well-thought-out crisis plan in place, especially not being compassionate enough about the stresses being endured by the surviving families of missing passengers.
Reducing stress about the entire flying experience, and not just extreme tragic incidents, should be part of a crisis planning and mitigation. Even seemingly insignificant gestures by airlines can pay big PR and reputation rewards. For instance, a number of airports are now engaging a therapy dog program where pets cruise the airport, just like celebrities, getting petted, photographed and coddled to soften the stressful flying experience for passengers. It’s called the PUP program, Pets Unstressing Passengers, and reports give it a big thumbs up.
Crisis mitigation must consider all aspects of a crisis and especially address the perceptions of a vast audience, which can include the flying public, families, regulators and the news media. Effective crisis plans for aviation disasters are not only built on who calls whom, how the lawyers are notified and who is the best spokesperson. There is a softer side, a more human-centric side, to a crisis plan, which should be considered to combat our emotional reactions and subsequent perceptions.
Scott Sobel is president of Media & Communications Strategies, Inc., www.macstrategies.com, and Danielle Blevins is an associate account executive at the Washington, D.C.-based boutique PR agency. MAC Strategies represents international aviation clients and an eclectic list of other clients. The agency holds the 2013 Bulldog Reporter Crisis Agency of the Year Award, among many other crisis and reputation management awards, illustrating commitment for clients. MAC Strategies is a founding member and active participant of Public Relations Boutiques International www.prboutiques.com, comprised of dozens of boutique agencies worldwide.