Social Media Faux Pas- The Finnair story

Finnair has a very creative social media team and as an Indian, still remember the flash dance in a flight leaving for Delhi to celebrate the Indian Republic Day. This was 2 years back and the video has garnered over 5,235,462 views, 16,771 likes and over 6000 comments at the time of this post. This also meant Finnair flew straight into the Indian hearts with no big budget marketing spend. But what happened on social media is a lesson for all companies.

In the wake of Malaysian Airlines MH17 tragedy, many airlines had apparently announced that they were not flying over Ukraine on their social media account. FlightRadar24, a live flight tracker website, was prompted to respond otherwise especially to Finnair who claimed not flying over Ukraine. On being pointed out of the error, Finnair twitter account issued a further denial on the social networking site basis the..umm..shape of the earth. This communication could have been avoided. Social media went berserk and ensured Finnair posted an apology. Which they did, but in Finnish and later in English.

Learning:

1. Companies beware of what you post online
2. Double check the data prior to posting
3. Avoid baseless denial
4. Do not let things go out of control
5. Have an attitude to apologize but make it fast
6. Respect the power of Social Media

Sharing the timeline of the incident. Timeline courtesy- Twitter.com

(Disclaimer- Views and opinions expressed in the post are strictly personal)

Views are personal