OUM BUSINESS SCHOOL

JANUARY 2022 SEMESTER

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PRICIPLES OF CORPORATE COMMUNICATION

NO. MATRIKULASI : 830513086413001

NO. KAD PENGNEALAN : 830513-08-6413
NO. TELEFON : 012-6244003
E-MEL : mohdaffendi@oum.edu.my

PUSAT PEMBELAJARAN : NEGERI SEMBILAN LEARNING

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1. INTRODUCTION OF MEDIA RELATION
Media relations begins inside a corporation, when a company has an important update
to share their product or services. Whether the news cover a cutting-edge new product, a
change in structure or process or an exciting business expansion, someone has to
distribute the news to the media. Media relations is a large part of the public relations
profession involves working with the media. Public relations seeks to garner publicity
that benefits a customer.
Mass media is the preferred channel for reaching out to the public because audiences
view media coverage as more credible than traditional advertising or promotional efforts.
Therefore, marketing and advertising are powerful tools for any corporation, allowing
business leaders to spread the word about valuable products and services to broad
audience. The marketing efforts may fall flat without a public relations firm providing
media relations.
According to Grunig & Hunt (1984), media relations have a central role within the
practice of public relations because the media are the “gatekeepers controlling the
information that flows to other publics in a social system”. Also, media relations is an
integral part of any business, allowing professionals to distribute company news and
product updates through traditional news outlet and popular social media channels.
Because of their role in the market place, these outlets are regarded as credible sources of
information, earing the trust of clients.
Media relations also refers to the mutually beneficial relationship between journalists
and public relations professionals. One of the biggest benefits for journalists is the easy
access to story ideas and sources.

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2. THE MEDIA RELATION PLAN

Let me take AirAsia Berhad which is also known as AirAsia, is a low cost airline
company which provides air transportation service based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
AirAsia is a low-cost airline offering the lowest fares to more than 100 destinations
around the world. It’s founder & CEO, Tony Fernandez, established the company in
1993, and has since expanded the business to its subsidiaries which are AirAsia Thailand,
AirAsia Indonesia, AirAsia Philippines, AirAsia India, AirAsia Japan , AirAsia X
Thailand, and AirAsia X Indonesia.
i. Situational Analysis
Situational analysis is always referred to as a SWOT analysis, which covers
the existing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of AirAsia and
their competitors.
Strengths are defined as what each business does best in its range of
operations which can give it an upper hand over its competitors. Some of the
key strengths of AirAsia are:
AirAsia is the low-cost leader in Asia. The airline has been successful in
ensuring that they consistently keep their operating costs as low as possible
and this means that the benefits of this trickle the pricing. AirAsia is the one of
the organization with a good company strategic management and has their
successful story in the airplane industry in the world. AirAsia has been named
the World’s Best Low-Cost Airline for the 10th year in a row. The achievement
that AirAsia received the accolade at the 2018 Skytrax World Airline Awards
held at the Langham, London. With the help of AirAsia Academy, AirAsia has

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successfully created a “low-cost airline mentality” among their workforce. The
workforce is a very flexible and high committed and also very critical in
making AirAsia the lowest cost airline in Asia. Next, AirAsia’s brand name is
well established in Asia Pacific. Besides the normal print media advertising
and promotions, AirAsia’s top management also capitalized on promotions
through news by being very “media friendly” and freely sharing the latest
information on AirAsia as well as the airline industry. AirAsia’s partnership
with other service providers such as hotels and hostels, car rental firms,
hospitals (medical tourism), CIMB ‘Save & Fly Campaign, ROKKI
(AirAsia’s on-board Wi-Fi that offer in flight entertainment and connectivity
at your fingertips) has created a very unique image among travelers. The link
with Manchester United and Queen Park Rangers which are the world’s most
famous football team in English Premier League have further boosted their
image to a greater extend beyond just this region. AirAsia has been using
cutting-edge technologies for innovation. The excellent innovation of IT has
directly contributed to their promotional activities which are email alerts and
desktop widget which was jointly developed with Microsoft for new
promotions. Some of their service innovation include online ticket reservation
printing and even e-booking. This airline service has also been streamlining
cost by replacing human effort with technology through online services.
Weaknesses are used to refer to areas where the organization or the brand
needs improvement. The following are the weaknesses of AirAsia:
AirAsia Berhad does not have their own maintenance, repair and overhaul
(MRO) facility. It may be a good strategy when they first started with only
Malaysia as the hub and few planes to maintain. But for now, with few hubs
(Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia) and over 100 planes currently owned and
about another 100 planes to be received in the next few years, AirAsia have to
make sure of proper and continuous maintenance of the planes which will also
help to keep overall costs low. This will make the AirAsia difficult to gain the
competitive advantage in the market when compared with others market leader
who has its own maintenance facility and team. AirAsia is low-cost airline and
thus it is critical that the airlines keep its operating costs as low as possible.
This is because, with the fluctuations in fuel costs and increase in service
costs, the airlines find it immensely challenging to keep their costs as low as
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possible and thus rely completely on volumes for their profits which in has
resulted in lowering the profits as well as reduced continuous revenue inflows.
Besides, AirAsia have received a lot of complaints from customers on their
services. This is one of challenges in balancing service quality with low-cost
pricing in AirAsia. However, customers are not willing to compromise on
quality just because they charge low and satisfaction is based on the quality of
services. Examples of complaints are around flight delays, being charged for a
lot of things and not able to change flight or get a refund if customers could
make it. Other than that, AirAsia got complaints about damaged luggage. On
April 2018, TV host/comedian AC Mizal had posted a video on his Facebook
profile, complaining about mishandled luggage after his flight from Penang to
Kuala Lumpur. In the video has over 893K views, AC Mizal had blamed
AirAsia and the airline's customer service for his damaged luggage, saying
that he was "frustrated" and "so upset" with the airline and its customer service
and that he could not understand how AirAsia was named the "best low-cost
carrier". (Sadho Ram, 2018). The video was viral on Facebook and its will
affect the image and reputation of AirAsia.
Opportunities refer to those avenues in the environment that surrounds the
business on which it can capitalize to increase it returns. Some of the
opportunities include:
In Asia where AirAsia is based out of these has been a surge in business travel
which are destinations like Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand are the popular in
the world tourist map and vacation seasons also see a surge in pleasure travel.
Threats are those factors in the environment which can be detrimental to the
growth of the business. Some of the threats include:
The company faces a lot of competition from brands such as Air India,
Singapore Airlines, Virgin Airlines and so on. For an example, AirAsia’s
profit margin is about 30% and this has already attracted many competitors.
Most of the full-service airlines have or planning to create a low-cost
subsidiary to compete directly with AirAsia. For example, Singapore Airlines
has created a low-cost carrier Tiger Airways. Air Asia is finding it immensely
difficult to manage the fluctuations in costs of fuel and also to maintain its vast
fleet of aircraft. The management of costs across time is the most critical
challenge that the airline faces. Besides that, the events such as the 2002
bombings in
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Bali, tsunami on 2004 and Bangkok Airport lockdown are unpredictable
potential treats. The aviation rules and government policies also act as a threat
and in this case, AirAsia faces fuel price raising, airport tax, handling charges
and government protection towards national carrier and predominant route
restrictions.
In conclusion, the SWOT analysis that AirAsia have is on the major
component to make AirAsia more strength in their business and can make they
are able to compete with the same low-cost carrier airline industry.
ii. Goal
Through the AirAsia’s philosophy of “Now Everyone Can Fly” is related to
their vision that they want to be the largest low cost airline in Asia and serving
3 billion people who are underserved with poor connectivity and high fares.
Their mission is to be the best company to work for whereby employees are
treated as part of a big family, to create a globally recognized ASEAN brand,
to attain the lowest cost so that everyone can fly with AirAsia, to maintain the
highest quality product, embracing technology to reduce cost and enhance
service levels.
iii. Objectives
There are many objectives of AirAsia is to promote the organization, services
and products through the effective communication program to the customers.
Next, to make sure that there is media relationship between the AirAsia and
the customers and the relationship can be strengthen through the campaign
awareness and brand reputation. Besides, the objective is to expand the
communication and media strategy in order to create brand or product
awareness to the customers in order to achieve the organization goal. Lastly,
media relations objective is to maintain the good relationship with the
customers and keep updating customers with organization information’s.

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iv. Target Audience(s)
Demographics
• AirAsia is not targeting a specific demographic group and it is mostly
based on social status or the average budget of the customers.
• Age: 20-50 years old.
• Travel via air for holidays at a cheaper rate.
• Target workers or low pay salaries earner and also students who have
not a lot of money.
• Fly to domestic and international routes for business purpose under a
small budget.
Psychographic and behavior
• Lower, middle and upper social classes on the basis of the variable
because different social classes tend to have different purchasing
behaviours, brand preferences and expectations.
• AirAsia targets people who want to travel in Asia for leisure and
business purposes.
• Alternatives means of transportation to travel during festive season in a
short period of time convenient travelling for students who will travel
from the West Coast to the East Coast of Malaysia.
v. Strategy Development
In order to communicate with the target audience, AirAsia is using
advertising as a tool in introducing the products and services. One of the most
important advertising media that frequently used is the media social. There are
many advantages of using social media which are the internet enable the
interactive capabilities, high selectivity by the users and the cost is low.
In AirAsia, the company strongly agrees that social media is playing an
important role in order for the organization to do advertising and build a
consumer group that contributing trust to brand and value. In addition, the
internet had made the people able to connect with the whole world people
easily and more time is spending for online nowadays. By using social media,
the messages of the product and services can be reaching out and able to share
out the content of message effectively. Besides that, the social media also able
to provide a channel of communication for the company to run their activity
such as to make announcements and inform customers about the latest deals
and promotions. Moreover, the social media is able to create a communication
platform for the AirAsia to connect with the people and enable the people to

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have more understanding on the business company. AirAsia first foray into
social media was in 2008 through their corporate blog, “Just Plane Thoughts”
and Facebook in 2009. Unlike other corporate blogs, the tone of the blog is
fairly informal and feature stories of their employees, customers as well as
contest announcements. Since then, the organization has actively embraced
social media. The effectiveness and efficiencies of the social media enable
AirAsia to reach the number of fans and creating a strong relation community.
For sure, AirAsia have over a million fans on Facebook, 46.4k followers on
Twitter, 645k followers on Instagram and also 102k subscribers on YouTube.
It is pretty clear that that social media has become a effective marketing
platform for every marketer to be advertising on or at the very least have sort
of viable presence. Hence, AirAsia the region’s leading and largest low-cost
carrier was recognized with the “Best Social Media Engagement” Awards at
the World Bloggers and Social Media Awards 2015 held in conjunction with
he Malaysia Social Media Week 2015 in Kuala Lumpur on 23 rd March 2015.
According to Mr Kikunaga Mitsuru, AirAsia Group Head of Digital said “We
are humbled and thrilled to be recognized as an airline with the “Best Social
Media Engagement”. We started our social media journey in early 2008 with
our corporate blog and slowly diversified our media presence into Facebook,
Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and few other carefully selected platforms. All
the social media platforms that have been set up, are designed to allow direct
engagement and interaction with our valued guests; apart from it being
channels of information.”
Another strategy of AirAsia to run the advertising is using inflight
magazine as advertising media whereby the unique and effective way of
advertising can be done to reach all the customers who take the flight. This
allows the messages of the campaign directly communicate with the passenger
and can across effectively whether on the ground or in the sky. AirAsia lively
and colorful Travel360 magazine has op-end, engaging features and potential
readership. Travel360 or Travel 3Sixty is a monthly inflight magazine that is
available on every AirAsia aircraft. By using the magazine, the messages of
the campaign can be more flexible to access to the different coverage of
markets and the target audiences are different. According to Datuk Kamarudin

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Meranun, Publisher of travel 3Sixty° said, “Our inflight publication is one of a
kind, reaching out to millions of travelers every month and providing
advertisers with high value and even higher visibility. We are proud to be the
only inflight publication in this region to be audited by ABC and this is our
commitment towards transparency. As we grow the number of guests we fly
each year, we look forward to offering advertisers better value through our
inflight magazine as well.”
Direct marketing is the one of an interactive system that can helps the
business company to personalized communications between them and the
customers. The organization is able to run two-way communications for their
product and services with the help of computer and internet development
nowadays. AirAsia is using direct marketing in order to encourage the
interactions between organizations and allow users to be more understanding
on the brand as an effort to increase the awareness of the organization to the
customers. One of the direct marketing tools that used by AirAsia is the Yahoo
Mobile. AirAsia is promoting and sending the messages to the customers by
using others website. AirAsia is all about convenience and efficiency. Their
aim is to allow customers to travel for as low as possible without losing profit
for the airlines. Hence, the buzz is to create as many products and services that
are circled around efficiency and convenience, such as, online bookings,
check-ins, pre-ordered food, kiosks, mobile detailing. And alongside, their
strategy, they’ve also created convenience in the form of holiday packages and
tours. AirAsia has launched booking services via mobile phone or landlines in
order to provide customer efficiency when it comes to ticket booking and
check-ins. The less steps and troubles a customer’s goes through, the faster
profit is generated and consumers are satisfied.

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vi. Key Message and Story Angle Development
AirAsia has flown over 55 million guests across the region and continues to
create more extensive route network through its associate companies. AirAsia
believes in the no-frills, hassle-free, low fare business concept and feels that
keeping costs low requires high efficiency in every part of the business.
Through this low-cost airline definitely lives up to its slogan “Now Everyone
Can Fly”, AirAsia has sparked a revolution in air travel with more and more
people around the region choosing AirAsia as their preferred choice of
transport. To become differently from others airline, AirAsia has implementing
few strategies in order to make sure that the low fare model is possible to run.
vii. Tactics
Tactics are the smaller scale actions that are taken to realize the objectives of
the strategy. Also, it is the most important things to achieve organizational
goals. The internet plays a vital part in the AirAsia business and has proved to
be critical to the success of the business. As a low-cost operation, controlling
the cost of doing business is clearly highly important to the airlines ability to
be competitive by offering low fares. In addition, AirAsia business is well
known in the airline industry for the use of pioneering technology and
innovation. It was the first airline in Asia to implement ticket less travel which
was implemented in March 2010. The customers were able to buy tickets over
the phone directly and booking website for the customers to check the booking
and the flight schedule information’s. Also, AirAsia business is the world’s
first airline introduced bookings through the short messaging service (SMS)
on mobiles. Instead of utilizing the traditional media which is newspaper or
radio, AirAsia has like many other modern organization, begun to move in the
direction of the youth with respect to more unconventional media approaches
to its campaigning. Their methodology has them focused on being fresh,
energetic and the most important of all driven to meet their goal of operating
people centered enterprise. This has led to their great success in the corporate
social media arena.

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viii. Media List Development
Air Asia’s social media

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https://tiktok.com

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https://linkedin.com

https://www.instagram.com/airasia/

https://airpaz.com

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https://www.facebook.com/AirAsia/

AirAsia’ has global social media presences on Facebook, Twitter,

Instagram and YouTube with, Facebook leading the social media pack with
more than a million followers. Twitter comes next 460,000 followers, mostly
within a young age group. Though they have a unified brand image, AirAsia
takes an extra effort to promoting their business strategy; for example, the way
AirAsia promoting their business using trending as “pickup-line”. The AirAsia

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pickup-line absolutely nailed it and they’re really catching up with the
trending and viral.

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Another example, AirAsia using Facebook and Twitter to complement their
press releases. In 4 years ago, amidst the peak festive holiday season –
Christmas approaching New Year, the AirAsia airline faced its first fatal crash
in its 11-year history on 28th December 2014. Flight QZ8501 that was end
route from Indonesia to Singapore crashed into the Java Sea nearly halfway
into its 2-hour flight claiming 162 lives including 7 members of the crew on
board. As soon as this happened, AirAsia employed effective communication
strategies to tackle the situation. Following the predicament, AirAsia’s CEO
Tony Fernandez started to address the unfortunate mishap by leveraging on
social media which are Twitter and Facebook as his means of communication.
He took his stand as the face and leader of the company and claimed
responsibility for the incident. As the spokesperson, he practiced open, honest
and constant communication to the public not only through distribution of
press releases but also via social media; Twitter and Facebook, to keep the
public informed about the situation. AirAsia also changed the color of its logo
from the usual cheerful red to a more subdued grey to share feelings of grief
and regret with the public in line with the disastrous event.

More than just carrying out his duties as a CEO and spokesperson of the
company by compensating the affected families, Tony Fernandez also
expressed his heartfelt condolences to them. Apart from just expressing how
sorry he felt on social media, he empathized with the families of the victims
by making a trip to Surabaya, Indonesia, with his team, where most of the
passengers were from with the sole purpose of meeting the families of the
victims personally to provide emotional support. He demonstrated humanity
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and genuine care by reaching out to the families. Through this initiative, he
proved that “Actions speak louder than words”.
With the ever growing need to move away from traditional advertising
avenues and to maximize your advertising dollars, AirAsia has come up with a
unique and effective way to reach a wide spectrum of consumers. Utilizing the
growing reach of Asia's No. 1 Low Fare Airline, AirSpace Advertising allows
you to communicate directly with AirAsia's broad spectrum of passengers,
giving you a channel to get your message across effectively. In addition,
advertising on AirAsia the easiest way to guarantee millions of eyes on
business advertisement. With AirAsia's fleet covering over 270 flight routes,
business organization can target different passengers based on their travel
route, origin or destination and demographic profile with a variety of
impactful, route specific advertising options. Engage with customers through
specific radio announcements or inflight games or take others brand to the
skies and generate extensive publicity through a plane livery.

3. THE IMPORTANT OF MEDIA RELATIONS PLAN

In a business world, public relation and media relations are often used
interchangeably as they appear to be confusingly similar but these are different business
strategy. Media relations is a vital part of public relations. There are many the important
things of media relations plan of AirAsia.
AirAsia has used social media instead to build relationships with those around them
which struggle to maintain fan base and to encourage new ones. Their willingness to use
platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to build strong customer loyalty and
brand recognition has led to their overcoming of much of the competition. This is also in
part thanks to an innovative corporate methodology for forming and maintaining these
relationships as well as strengthening them. It seems like AirAsia has covered its bases
with regards to social media, however there is always room to grow and climb. As new
technologies and applications are produced one can be sure that AirAsia will be among
the first to implement the tools as part of their arsenal. Their success in the social media
field has even gone so far as to be noticed by major news outlets and have over 1.8
million likes on Facebook. With this, AirAsia stands to be a powerhouse in future
markets.
Besides, AirAsia carried out constant communication in the form of press releases to
keep the media and the public informed on daily updates since the day of the catastrophic

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incident. During a crisis every single step the company takes to address the situation
counts. AirAsia executed decisive measures in its communication efforts, especially
through promptness in feeding the public with latest updates on the crisis. The use of
social media as a communication channel to maintain the publics’ trust and perception
towards AirAsia was a good move. The crisis communication strategy that AirAsia
adopted by leveraging on social media to complement the press releases is exemplary and
a successful case study for many companies.

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4. CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the media relations is an important tool which helps the organization
understand the role that the media can play in assisting the organization. The plan may as
a blueprint to establish a good relationship with the media. A good plan should typically
comprise situational analysis, goal, objective, target audience, strategy development, key
message and story angle development, tactics and media list development. In general, the
findings indicated that Air Asia is a very successful airline in Malaysia. It is well known
as low-cost airline. Over the years, Air Asia had received more than 50 awards for their
excellence start. For example, it has been given the World's Best Low-Cost Airline
awards by Skytrax for the year 2010. Air Asia is famous not only because of the low cost.
While it also because of other business strategy of Air Asia. Thus, business strategy
development of Air Asia is the important key for the successful of Air Asia.

5. REFERENCE
Essays, UK. (November 2013). A Marketing Analysis Of Air Asia Marketing Essay.
Retrieved from https://www.ukessays.com/essays/marketing/a-marketing-analysis-of-air-asia-
marketing-essay.php?vref=1

Target Audience For AirAsia. (2016, Sep 27). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/target-
audience-for-airasia-essay

New Straits Times Business. (2018, July 17). Retrieved from

https://www.nst.com.my/business/2018/07/391806/airasia%C2%A0named-worlds-best-low-
cost-airline-10th-year-row

AirAsia. (Dec 2015). Press Releases: AirAsia’s inflight magazine Travel 3Sixty records
increase in distribution numbers. Retrieved from https://www.airasia.com/my/en/press-
releases/airasia-inflight-magazine-travel-3sixtyo-records-increase-in-distribution-
numbers.page

AirAsia. (2018). Ad space: Inflight magazine. Retrieved

from https://www.airasia.com/my/en/about-us/ad-space.page

AirAsia in Business Competition Era (2009) SWOT Analysis. Retrieved from

http://elearning.lib.fcu.edu.tw/bitstream/2377/28913/1/M980005798101.pdf

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