Now everyone can talk to Tony, but does Tony want to talk to everyone?
In the latest salvo in a long-running battle against this great expense known as "airport tax", AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes (and for the record, he also sits on the board of MAS by virtue of the latest share-swap between the two companies) has taken up use of the Twitter-cannon. This was after Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad (MAHB) announced an increase in the airport tax by 28 percent, prompting AirAsia to go on a major guerrilla public relations campaign, which included having AirAsia staff wear anti-airport tax stickers, and which culminated in a Peugeot car reputedly belonging to the CEO decked out in anti-airport tax motifs being parked in the tarmac of the Low Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT).
[Disclosure: I have never flown AirAsia, and hope to whatever higher power exists out there that I never will have to in this or the next lifetime].
The AirAsia CEO uses the handle tonyfernandes when posting on Twitter, where he has been carrying on the battle against the increased airport tax and the KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport) 2 terminal. And whilst he appeared to be quite happy to take on all comers in the battle, this appeared to wane a little when Twitter users used the platform to raise questions and complaints about AirAsia's charges, prompting Fernandes to tweet: "It's a free world. If you don't want to fly and done like us you don't. We have to use malaysian airports. That's the difference".
Testy. I wonder if he was giving his PR people the fits with each tweet he sent out.
Speaking as a consumer, it is quite gratifying to see the big kahuna of a public-listed company personally take on the critics of the company's services although I must admit, the tone of the above tweet was rather unbecoming, if not somewhat churlish. Perhaps Fernandes has decided to cultivate the famous crustiness of RyanAir's CEO Michael O Leary as the new image of AirAsia.
Personally, I'm not a fan of the CEO and so I am a little pleased to see him having to deal with the critics, when in the past, Twitter has always seemed to be something of a one-way-rant/public adoration street for him. But it just goes to show that in this day and age, social media is a double-edged sword. When Maxis Bhd had a blog get-together for the digerati to announce their upcoming plans to go heavily into channels like Twitter and Facebook to reach out to customers, my first question was "can you deal with the hate?" All brands and companies love Twitter/Facebook when it is a platform for them to promote the hell out of something or take the "digital high ground" on a matter/issue but they are often left shell-shocked when confronted with a flood of complaints or customer dissatisfaction. Shell shock which has been known to result in brands/companies deleting entries from their FB Wall to hide the negative comments or to continuously post items on the Wall in order to push a negative post extremely far down the Wall.
What is surprising is how MAHB has chosen to respond to all of this. The company has resorted to posting a series of emails on its Web site (http://www.malaysiaairports.com.my/) that appear to show support for its position (a number of those emails however do also rail against AirAsia). I might add, the Web site is horribly circa 1990 or even 2000. Ugh.
A very cursory Google search revealed three different Facebook pages, of which only one appears to actually have entries, and even that entry dated back to August 2011 (I think). There does not also appear to be any Twitter account linked to the company.
MAHB is a public-listed company but it does not appear to have a meaningful social media presence at all (Digital Agencies: READY, STEADY, GO PITCH!). It does not even appear to be utilizing this platform to defend itself against the onslaught by AirAsia and the Malaysian public, despite having a very good form of self-defense, namely, that AirAsia actually owes MABH money (135 million per latest Malaysian Insider article here) from previously unpaid airport tax that AirAsia has already collected from its customers.
On the other hand, the Ministry of Tourism can splurge 30,000 ringgit (US$9,588) a month to update its six Facebook pages. You really have to wonder what is going on in the minds of the respective people running the Ministry and MAHB--one appears to wantonly spend taxpayers' money to unnecessarily burnish its reputation and the other appears to be blissfully ignorant of the legitimate need to spend money on preventing its reputation from being pummeled. The biggest joke, of course, is that the Ministry of Tourism and MAHB have a mutual "shareholder"--namely the government of Malaysia. (Malaysia's Sovereign Wealth Fund Khazanah still owns a hefty stake in MABH). Does MAHB even have a PR company on hand? Because if this is what MAHB regards as crisis or even, image management, heaven help them if the Black Plague or SARS somehow manages to make an appearance in the terminals of KLIA.
[Disclosure: I have never flown AirAsia, and hope to whatever higher power exists out there that I never will have to in this or the next lifetime].
The AirAsia CEO uses the handle tonyfernandes when posting on Twitter, where he has been carrying on the battle against the increased airport tax and the KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport) 2 terminal. And whilst he appeared to be quite happy to take on all comers in the battle, this appeared to wane a little when Twitter users used the platform to raise questions and complaints about AirAsia's charges, prompting Fernandes to tweet: "It's a free world. If you don't want to fly and done like us you don't. We have to use malaysian airports. That's the difference".
Testy. I wonder if he was giving his PR people the fits with each tweet he sent out.
Speaking as a consumer, it is quite gratifying to see the big kahuna of a public-listed company personally take on the critics of the company's services although I must admit, the tone of the above tweet was rather unbecoming, if not somewhat churlish. Perhaps Fernandes has decided to cultivate the famous crustiness of RyanAir's CEO Michael O Leary as the new image of AirAsia.
Personally, I'm not a fan of the CEO and so I am a little pleased to see him having to deal with the critics, when in the past, Twitter has always seemed to be something of a one-way-rant/public adoration street for him. But it just goes to show that in this day and age, social media is a double-edged sword. When Maxis Bhd had a blog get-together for the digerati to announce their upcoming plans to go heavily into channels like Twitter and Facebook to reach out to customers, my first question was "can you deal with the hate?" All brands and companies love Twitter/Facebook when it is a platform for them to promote the hell out of something or take the "digital high ground" on a matter/issue but they are often left shell-shocked when confronted with a flood of complaints or customer dissatisfaction. Shell shock which has been known to result in brands/companies deleting entries from their FB Wall to hide the negative comments or to continuously post items on the Wall in order to push a negative post extremely far down the Wall.
What is surprising is how MAHB has chosen to respond to all of this. The company has resorted to posting a series of emails on its Web site (http://www.malaysiaairports.com.my/) that appear to show support for its position (a number of those emails however do also rail against AirAsia). I might add, the Web site is horribly circa 1990 or even 2000. Ugh.
A very cursory Google search revealed three different Facebook pages, of which only one appears to actually have entries, and even that entry dated back to August 2011 (I think). There does not also appear to be any Twitter account linked to the company.
MAHB is a public-listed company but it does not appear to have a meaningful social media presence at all (Digital Agencies: READY, STEADY, GO PITCH!). It does not even appear to be utilizing this platform to defend itself against the onslaught by AirAsia and the Malaysian public, despite having a very good form of self-defense, namely, that AirAsia actually owes MABH money (135 million per latest Malaysian Insider article here) from previously unpaid airport tax that AirAsia has already collected from its customers.
On the other hand, the Ministry of Tourism can splurge 30,000 ringgit (US$9,588) a month to update its six Facebook pages. You really have to wonder what is going on in the minds of the respective people running the Ministry and MAHB--one appears to wantonly spend taxpayers' money to unnecessarily burnish its reputation and the other appears to be blissfully ignorant of the legitimate need to spend money on preventing its reputation from being pummeled. The biggest joke, of course, is that the Ministry of Tourism and MAHB have a mutual "shareholder"--namely the government of Malaysia. (Malaysia's Sovereign Wealth Fund Khazanah still owns a hefty stake in MABH). Does MAHB even have a PR company on hand? Because if this is what MAHB regards as crisis or even, image management, heaven help them if the Black Plague or SARS somehow manages to make an appearance in the terminals of KLIA.
About the Blogger
Bernice Low is a screenwriter and pen-for-hire. At age 11 (in the era of BB--Before Blog) Bernice started her own newspaper, the Daily Jelly. It lasted two days before she was stopped from using school newsprint supplies for frivolous activities. Twitter: teteatech
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