BA marketing falls victim to management failings

It will go down as one of Britain’s worst executed product launches.

The opening of Heathrow’s Terminal Five last week was a bungled opportunity for British Airways to give meaning to its advertising slogan “Upgrade to BA.”

The launch of the state-of-the-art terminal, created exclusively for the use of BA, was intended to usher in a new era of comfort, efficiency and ease for the airline’s passengers.

Instead, it rapidly descended into a shambles. Within hours of opening, T5’s baggage handling system crashed. In the ensuing chaos, hundreds of flights were cancelled, thousands of passengers were left stranded with limited information while 20,000 bags went missing. The airline stands accused of failing to invest in adequate staff training and preparation for the move to T5.

BA’s senior managers compounded the crisis by giving a slow response to the media and then playing down the extent of the disruption. BA’s chief executive Willie Walsh issued a belated apology but only after BA’s reputation had been well and truly battered.

A multi-million pound advertising campaign by Bartle Bogle Hegarty to herald the opening of the £4.3bn terminal has been put on hold. Some believe that the whole “Upgrade to BA” strategy created by BBH has been seriously undermined by the debacle.

Many wonder how the airline’s marketers will pull the brand out of this nose-dive. Not that the marketing department have had much time for long-term strategic thinking. As we reported this week, BA’s marketing chief Tiffany Hall was one of many senior managers drafted onto the airport concourse to help out with passengers as part of efforts to allay the chaos.

When she gets back to her day job, Hall will confront a massive marketing task. But restoring faith in the BA brand is not something a marketing campaign alone can achieve. Only the airline’s management can do that by radically reversing the company’s strategy of putting the interests of shareholders before those of customers and staff.

Walsh’s humiliating admission of responsibility for the fiasco is the first step to rebuilding the airline’s reputation. While Heathrow’s owner BAA has admitted its share of the blame, passengers tend to blame airlines, not airports, for cancellations and lost baggage.

But it will take more than mere words to reaffirm BA’s brand promise of top class customer service. Ensuring staff are adequately trained for the continuing shift of BA flights to T5 is top of the agenda. That will require investment that eats into BA’s profits. Given that the T5 debacle is likely to cost BA £50m this year in compensation and lost revenues, it would have been more cost effective to invest in staff training and get the move to T5 right from day one.

But what of the immediate message BA should communicate? Some have suggested the airline runs an ad campaign apologising for the chaos and making a promise of improvement. But all agree that for the time being it should stop sending out direct mail proclaiming “The calm of Terminal 5”.

There are other clouds on the horizon for BA. It has an ageing fleet and has dithered over ordering the new Airbus A380 aircraft which rivals will start operating from this year. BA’s A380s will not arrive until 2012 at the earliest. Meanwhile, the “Upgrade to BA” line is undermined by customer service surveys which put it among the second rank of airlines. For instance, the Skytrax index gives BA four stars, along with Virgin Atlantic, Silverjet, Air France and Lufthansa. Five star airlines include Asiana, Malaysia and Singapore Airlines and Qatar and Cathay Pacific Airways. To deliver on the “Upgrade” promise means BA must aim to be in the top tier of airlines.

At the same time, BA is facing a competitive threat to its transatlantic business routes with the Open Skies agreement deregulating flights between the US and Europe. BA is responding with the launch of its own business airline called Open Skies.

Despite these threats, BA still has much to build on. Its stranglehold on Heathrow slots gives it a huge advantage against rivals. It has a powerful brand and a heritage as the “World’s Favourite Airline”.

But until it learns to put customers and staff before short-term profits, BA’s marketers will have thin fabric from which to fashion a world-beating brand. Restoring BA’s image will be one of the marketing challenges of the decade.