Malaysia Airlines 'Bucket List' Competition, Ill-Conceived and Inappropriate

You would be hard-pressed to find someone who has not heard of Malaysia Airlines following a year of tragedy. For anyone who has avoided all media channels for the past 12 months, Malaysia Airlines is an international passenger airline, based out of Kuala Lumpur, that suffered two high profile disasters in 2014 resulting in the deaths of 537 crew and passengers. At this point in time, it may have seemed that a social media "sharing" competition would be a great way to help rebuild the company's tarnished reputation. A poor choice of words proved that idea wrong.

Enter the "My Ultimate Bucket List" competition, which requires entrants to list items they would like to tick off on their bucket list. A "bucket list" is a list of things you would like to do before you "kick the bucket"(pass away). To help this contest spread, Malaysia Airlines provided the incentive of an additional entry for each share of the contest across a selection of different social media platforms.

Given the recent tragic history of the airline, it takes very little common sense to realise why such a title is terribly inappropriate. With regard to Rogerson's eight ethical principles, this lack of thought on Malaysia Airline's behalf violates the first principle of honour, as evidenced by the public outrage. It seems as though the fifth principle of due care was breached also, as it is not likely this competition title would have gone public, had the best quality assurance standards been adhered to. Lastly, it appears that the sixth principle fairness was not taken into account either, because those who have been affected by the tragedies should have been considered as stakeholders before making the decision to proceed with a potentially (almost certainly) offensive competition title.

Indeed, it does seem ludicrous for Malaysia Airlines to have conceived a title for their competition that has connotations with death and it did not take long for Twitter users to address the obvious concern with the competition title.

In relation to the key risks and concerns proposed by Dawson (2008), the primary consequence of this social media mishap was a further negative impact upon Malaysia Airline's reputation, as evidenced by the flood of negative external comments throughout social media channels. This is the exact opposite of what the airline set out to achieve. The six key risks and concerns of Enterprise 2.0 highlighted by Dawson are displayed below.

No directly measurable consequences of this 'blunder' appear to be readily available, however if the $97.2 million AUD loss in this years April - June quarter is anything to go by, a further dent in the reputation of this already ailing company will not go unnoticed. This is especially relevant given that the full impact of both tragedies is to be realised in the results for the second half of this year. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words; this is certainly the case with regard to the reputation of Malaysia Airlines in the wake of the MH370 disaster.

The failed competition was renamed within two days of the initial release asking consumers now to give their "ultimate to-do list". Malaysia Airlines also offered this statement via their Facebook page:

Such a colossal mistake could have easily been avoided if certain social media guidelines or best practices had been implemented at Malaysia Airlines. Such guidelines should cover quality assurance methodology to ensure that due care is taken before going public with any marketing or promotional material, such as thought and discussion regarding all stakeholders before posting.

Question for my readers: Has the reputation of Malaysia Airlines been damaged beyond repair in your eyes? What would it take for you to fly with them in the future?

References:

Dawson, R., Hough, J., Hill, J., Winterford, B., & Alexandrov, D. (2008). Implementing Enterprise 2.0. San Francisco, Sydney: Advanced Human Technologies.