This sounded ominous.
Over the past week, Qantas has faced a social media backlash over the appearance of private pilot and A-lister John Travolta in its new air safety video. According to Pop Eater, the airline’s cabin crew were highly critical of the campaign and described the video as ‘tacky’ and ‘corny’.
We’ve run a quick analysis of the social discussion to evaluate how the story developed and gauge sentiment towards Qantas in the context of the video.
First up, the channel breakdown shows us where the discussion has been.
And, how the story has spread across different social platforms.
There were no surprises that Twitter captured the conversation and we were able to drill down to the topic cloud for microblogs.
There were two stand-out phrases. ‘John Travolta angers’ based on tweets and reweets of ‘John Travolta Angers Qantas Employees With In-Flight Video Appearance’, mostly by celebrity and movie gossip sites. Social media relates to tweets warning of a ‘storm’.
The news hit the forums mid-week and the most influential site was airport.yuku.com which mentioned that staff had ‘taken to anonymous posts online to discuss their dislike of the Travolta video’ with some calls for Qantas pilot de Crespigny to replace him. It also mentioned staff members felt demeaned by Travolta calling them the team, not cabin crew.
In terms of sentiment, the standout negative comments (11.4%) regarding staff reaction have been discussed. Wider comments claimed that the video was a bit ‘misleading’
But, an analysis of the positive comments (13.8%) has showed that while some crew were upset by the video, on balance the story had little impact on public perception of the airline’s safety. For example, responses to a piece on the Huffington Post included: ‘What is the noise all about? This is a very good safety video. There’s no difference between it and the many ones I have seen, well, except that it begins with a celebrity whom the Qantas crews are jealous of’.
If a crisis breaks and a story goes viral, any brand or PR agency needs to mitigate the situation. Fast. And remember, there are four helpful rules: monitor the discussion, listen & communicate, participate in the conversation and then follow up.