There is nothing more enticing for the media than using children to attract the public. Adorable little Harry Winsor mailed Boeing his idea of what a perfect airplane would look like, in hopes the company would consider his idea and create this plane. Cold Boeing ignored the fact that Harry is just a small kid with a BIG imagination and sent him a standard letter stating that Boeing "does not accept unsolicited ideas" because " the time, cost and risk involved in processing them, therefore, were not justified by the benefits gained". There are many ways to look at this situation. For starters, Boeing needs to find a better way to communicate with its consumers. In an age where global communication can happen in a matter of instants and online censorship is not regulated, companies need to be extra careful in how they handle their image. If this situation would have happened 20 years ago, which I am sure it did, not many consumers would have known about it. Many companies are still not up to date on how to handle their PR in this new age of Web 2.0 and this reflections are seen on cases like this one. Of course it does not help that Harry's dad is the CEO of an adverstising agency, uses crowdsourcing and like millions of people, he has a blog where he comments on everyday relevant situations like this one. His message was instantly transmitted to all his contacts and it reached The New York Times who, of course, wrote an article. Maybe Mr. Windsor saw this as the perfect opportunity to advertise his ad agency. After all, free publicity does not cost anything. Moreover, this Pandora box gives other airline companies the opportunity to use this case in their next ad campaign with tag lines that could read "fly with us, we are a family company" or "we value our customers, even if their imaginations are up in the air". Boeing will learn its lesson and its image might get damaged for a short period but it will recoup soon enough. Saturday, September 25, 2010
Harry vs. Boeing
There is nothing more enticing for the media than using children to attract the public. Adorable little Harry Winsor mailed Boeing his idea of what a perfect airplane would look like, in hopes the company would consider his idea and create this plane. Cold Boeing ignored the fact that Harry is just a small kid with a BIG imagination and sent him a standard letter stating that Boeing "does not accept unsolicited ideas" because " the time, cost and risk involved in processing them, therefore, were not justified by the benefits gained". There are many ways to look at this situation. For starters, Boeing needs to find a better way to communicate with its consumers. In an age where global communication can happen in a matter of instants and online censorship is not regulated, companies need to be extra careful in how they handle their image. If this situation would have happened 20 years ago, which I am sure it did, not many consumers would have known about it. Many companies are still not up to date on how to handle their PR in this new age of Web 2.0 and this reflections are seen on cases like this one. Of course it does not help that Harry's dad is the CEO of an adverstising agency, uses crowdsourcing and like millions of people, he has a blog where he comments on everyday relevant situations like this one. His message was instantly transmitted to all his contacts and it reached The New York Times who, of course, wrote an article. Maybe Mr. Windsor saw this as the perfect opportunity to advertise his ad agency. After all, free publicity does not cost anything. Moreover, this Pandora box gives other airline companies the opportunity to use this case in their next ad campaign with tag lines that could read "fly with us, we are a family company" or "we value our customers, even if their imaginations are up in the air". Boeing will learn its lesson and its image might get damaged for a short period but it will recoup soon enough. 
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Interesting article and I agree with everything. When reading over the original topic, I completely forgot that since this was in the news, competing companies could have used this information somewhat to their benefit. So the point you brought up about other companies using this as some sort of leverage was interesting. A companies image (especially the way they treat their customers) goes a long way in gaining a favorable branding. If other companies indeed try to use this, it may be futile though because Boeing dominates the market share in their respective line of business.
ReplyDeleteBoeing definitely needs to find a better way to communicate to individuals and not just identical form letters to protect the company. I understand the company has to protect itself, but they should find the time go the extra mile to maintain their brand image. I am sure other companies learned a lesson from Boeing when communicating with consumers. Other aircraft manufactures might use this incident against Boeing, but I agree with Drew. Boeing has a such a large market share that the incident will most likely not affect the company.
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