Review questions

$1$ What motivations can you identify behind the generation of negative eWOM

in Qantas' promotional activity?

$2$ Once the campaign went live, was there any way in which Qantas could

have minimised the impact of the negative eWOM?

$3$ According to the steps discussed in this chapter to plan a viral campaign,

which ones were overlooked by the Qantas team and resulted in the outcome

described in the case study?

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AA $6$: Losing control at Qantas: Controlling digital marketing$/$ viral campaigns

Qantas and control over viral campaigns

Qantas Airways Limited is an Australian airline group founded in Queensland in $1920.$

The company has grown to become Australia's largest domestic and international airline and employs over $30,000$ people worldwide $($Qantas$,2015).$ From the marketing and PR perspective, several of the activities organised by the company in the last years are a perfect example of the challenges that organisations are facing when conducting marketing activities in Web $2\mathrm{.}0$ environments. The airline ran into trouble in October $2011,$ when more than $68,000$ passenger were stranded worldwide due to a labour dispute with three company unions $($Rourke$,2011).$ The Australian government intervened and held emergency court sessions. Qantas aircraft were back in the air after three days, with a ruling from the court to resolve the dispute within $21$ days or face a binding arbitration decision $($McGuirk$,2011).$

With the matter with the unions still unresolved, Qantas launched on November $23$rd of the same year another competition to win one of $50$ pairs of Qantas first$-$class pyjamas and a luxury amenity kit $($Miller$,2011).$ The company invited its followers to participate in this contest using the hashtag #QantasLuxury, yet the initiative backfired and the hashtag was used by Qantas' customers to express their frustrations with the airline. The initiative quickly became a mechanism were consumers were complaining for being stranded due to the labour dispute, as well as other unrelated complains such as baggage loss and poor customer service. Within an hour of the hashtag being shared it reached over $500,000$ users and resulted in $1\mathrm{.}4$ million impressions $($Social Media News, $2011).$

Kennedy $(2011),$ a practitioner in social media monitoring, suggests that Qantas did not pay enough attention to the sentiment of its users prior to launching this initiative. She argues that before launching a social media campaign, companies need to check the temperature of the online channel they are planning to use. Evidence back then suggests that Twitter users had still in their minds the bad experience of the flights that were grounded just a weeks before. read this case study and answer the given questions