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Mark Ragan
Posts RSSMar
27
You work for the most popular airline in the world. Your customers love you, and you have this zany corporate culture that reporters love to write about. Everything is fine with the world.
Then one day the crisis strikes. In one 24-hour period you get slammed with 500 media inquiries because the FAA says your airplanes are “unairworthy.”
Nightmare you say? Not to Ginger Hardage, senior vice president for corporate communications at Southwest Airlines. Hardage told a packed crowd of IABC communicators how her company responded to the media onslaught on March 12 when Southwest grounded 8 percent of its fleet.
Last week I promised my eXchange blog readers that I would cover the event.
Here is the story I am running on the front page of Ragan.com today.
Hope you enjoy it.
Ginger Hardage, Southwest Airlines Interview
A couple of points I did not make in my Ragan.com article. I feel they are really only pertinent to the IABC Chicago chapter.
I have known Ginger Hardage almost from the day I started at Ragan in the early 1990’s. She is one of the best in our business. What can you say about someone who flies from Dallas to Chicago to make a 45-minute address to roughly 50 colleagues? It’s the kind of commitment to our profession that all of Southwest’s communicators demonstrate.
I mentioned in a previous blog that I have been criticized for praising Hardage and Southwest too much. But I don’t know how to get around this: Her company really does practice good internal and external communications. Does Southwest always make the right moves? Of course not. It stumbled two weeks ago when it came out swinging, accusing the FAA of misleading the public. But even that mistake was handled well. The company quickly trotted CEO Gary Kelly before the press to apologize.
Communication is messy all of the time. It’s really messy during a crisis. It’s how you handle that mess, how you correct your mistakes, and the speed with which you do it that matters.
What do you think?
Mar
20
I wrote a front-page piece last week for our news site praising Southwest Airlines and its communication policy. Some of my readers didn’t like the article. How could I possibly say good things about a company that the FAA has accused of violating its inspection policy?
Here was how I responded: Whether Southwest violated the FAA policy or not, the way the airline responds publicly says something about its  character. Let’s face it, most companies would have its lawyers write a brief, unreadable statement filled with jargon and platitudes. That is not what Southwest did.  Instead, the company came out swinging, defending its safety record and questioning the FAA allegation. It then posted a similar response to it blog, Nuts About Southwest—a blog, by the way, that allows readers to fully vent their frustration and anger with  the company. Then, a  few days later, the CEO apologized for this initial response and conceded that more needed to be done to address the airplane maintenance issue.  Â
Yes, it was messy.  No, the communication was not perfect. But I admire the company’s willingness to talk about its problems, to avoid the cut-and-run mentality; and most importantly, I respect the company for allowing customers to slam it daily on its blog. This kind of communication policy can only lead to good things. This afternoon, PR VP Ginger Hardage will address the IABC Chicago chapter. I plan on covering her remarks for Ragan.com and MyRaganTV.Â
I hope you’ll stay tuned.   Â
Mar
19
Mar
19
This is my first post on eXchange, so I thought I would write about social networks. It seemed like the perfect subject for an inaugural post on IABC’s new Web 2.0 tool.
Some readers know about MyRagan.com, the first social network created for internal communicators. We’re about to celebrate our first-year anniversary, so I wrote a piece for our Ragan.com news site on what we’ve learned about launching and hosting a social media site.
Here is a link to the story. If you get a moment, I would love to hear from IABC members on these questions:
– Are you interested in launching a professional networking site for your organization?
– If so, what obstacles do you face?
– Is management behind the project?
– What do you hope to accomplish?
I have invited many IABC members to join me in this discussion here at eXchange. I will do my best to continue what I started in the Ragan.com by answering your questions.
And I think we can help. We have a year of experience under our belts. We’ve made many mistakes, and we have had many triumphs.
So, read the story and let me know if I can help you in any way.
A final word about my Backtalk blog. My purpose here is to build a bridge between IABC communicators and the Ragan editorial staff. From time to time, I will blog about issues we have aired on our news site and on our social media sites.
I am not here to promote any specific product. On the other hand, if I can introduce IABC members to the wealth of information we offer at Ragan, then the company will benefit.
And I hope you will too.
Thanks for reading
P.S. Social media is a huge topic at our upcoming summit in London. Take a look at the video below for a preview.
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Ragan's Daily Headlines- Hewlett PackardÂ’s internal social network engages employees
- Create a speakers bureau and bring order to chaos
- What is the definition of YouTube success?
- Communicators grapple with stubborn problems at Ragan conference
- How to choose a blog platform
- When is crap not C.R.A.P.?
- Writers beware: Em dashes are overused and misunderstood
- Conference coverage How to survive social media
- Why writers need the semicolon
- What communicators can learn from MyRagan
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The world's top experts on internal communications will be appearing in London on June 4-6.
Topics include social media, change communications, measuring ROI and integrating print and online.