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Qantas Has 'Epic PR Fail' With Twitter Campaign

It's not a great time to ask customers to tweet 'luxury' suggestions

By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff

Posted Nov 22, 2011 2:35 PM CST | Updated Nov 27, 2011 7:07 AM CST

(Newser) – It’s been a rough stretch for Qantas. First, the Australian airline abruptly stranded customers around the world amid a contract fight with its unions; then those talks collapsed entirely; this week, the firm ticked off customers again with a contest on Twitter. It asked people to tweet their “dream luxury in-flight experience,” and customers were happy to oblige, Reuters reports. One wrote that luxury was “more than 3mins notice that the whole airline is on strike."

Another wrote that Qantas luxury was “being stranded on the other side of the world without warning when you just want to get home to your 10-month-old daughter." And on and on. PR experts called it a disaster. “Epic PR fail, excellent case study in corporate cultural tone deafness. Simply don't get it,” said one. Qantas sounded unfazed, however, coming back with a joke: “At this rate our #QantasLuxury competition is going to take years to judge.”

A man waits at the Qantas terminal at Sydney Airport for Qantas to resume flying on Oct. 31.
A man waits at the Qantas terminal at Sydney Airport for Qantas to resume flying on Oct. 31.   (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
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COMMENTS
Showing 2 of 5 comments
LoginsSuck
Nov 22, 2011 3:24 PM CST
Did they force their customers to pay 31K in airport fees before taking off? Did they decide to take out bathrooms so they could put in 7 more seats? Oh those were other airlines. Guess the Airline industry is having problems all over. What are they spending all their money on?
NxBigmouthery
Nov 22, 2011 3:23 PM CST
"#QantasLuxury is sitting in your first-class lounge chair, watching a failed social media campaign get out of control" was one of my favourites. Qantas doesn't seem to realise that the vast majority of Australians don't support what it's been up to recently.

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