Situation Analysis:

To restore their image and to clear all the negative presses about their airlines, Canadian Jet
airlines have launched its first Twitter contest with the help of the PR firm (Wrigley &
Walters). In that contest, the one with the most creative tweet using the hashtag
#CanJetLuxury will get two round-trip tickets to any of the company's destinations. However,
the contest backfired, and people used this hashtag to expose the company's errors and posted
negative tweets about the airlines.

Problem Statement

What should be the course of action for the Canadian Jet to check the negative image that is
being spread due to their Twitter campaign?

Options

 End(cancel) the campaign without declaring the winner

 End the campaign, declaring the winner
 Ignore the negative comments as there are many positive tweets, as well, and continue
with the campaign
 Divert with a new hashtag
 Reply with an apology (tweet)

Criteria for Evaluation

 Perception of Canadian Jet among customers

 Chance of creating any PR problems
 The reaction of the shareholders
Evaluation of alternatives

 Option A: Ending the campaign without declaring the winner will allow the company
to put an end to these negative tweets. Nevertheless, ending it abruptly without
declaring the winner would have the feelings of people who have genuinely tweeted,
affected.

 Option B: Here, it will stop the negative tweets and declaring the winner will see to it
that the ones who have genuinely commented do not get disheartened. But the
purpose of this contest was to recreate a positive image, which will not be fulfilled if
the contest is stopped.

 Option C: As it is an open platform campaign, the company cannot have control over
the comments that are tweeted. Thus, they should not worry about the negativity and
look forward to the positive tweets and declare the winner after the campaign ends.

 Option D: This would make the old hashtag to die and stop those negative tweets. But
the same problem with option B repeats here. The purpose of the campaign does not
get fulfilled.

 Option E: They should retweet with an apology message. Nevertheless, this would
mean that the company has accepted those negative tweets.

Recommendation:

I would recommend OPTION C.

Plan of Action

Firstly, let all the employees know of the current situation that is happening as anyone from
outside can contact any employee.

Then, I would ask my team to retweet the positive tweets with an acknowledgment say thank
you, or we look forward to serving you again or something of that sort. This will do two
things.
a) make the positive tweets to come to the top and
b) encourage people to tweet more positive tweets.

Also, declaring the winner, mentioning his/her tweet, would be the right way of advertising
the good things about the company in a subtle way.

Contingency Plan

Even after following the plan in Option B, and if the negative tweets continue to come in
huge numbers. Then the company can try Option D and try to divert those negative tweets by
killing the old hashtag with a new one.
Or they could also stop the campaign and declare the winner as suggested in Option B