Would your CEO apologise for a marketing mistake? [LHW 1928]

Leading Hotels of the World are having a difficult week when they should be celebrating their 80 year anniversary. Following on from their mis-handled USD 19.28 product promotion around 400 blog posts have been written in the last 3 days (Source: Google blogsearch). [See my previous post about the promotion]

Their CEO has now been forced to publish an apology on their website. This is a step in the right direction. Not sure it goes far enough to repair the damage they have done to their brand, their search engine optimisation nor their relationship with hundreds of thousands of their customers.

Lets look at how a CEO apology is structured. First, here is the classic from jetBlue from February 2007.

This 3 minute video is a classic. You can see that he is upset by the events that he is apologising for. You get the feeling that he really wants to put right the problems – he is a man with a plan. It comes over well. If you saw that you would consider giving them business again in the future.

Placing the video on Youtube was also a great move. It has currently been seen over 330,000 times and has 385 comments. However, their update (published 1 month later – in March 2007) only manages 5,500 views (and 16 comments). By that time they are back to “normal” corporate communications (rather than apologies) – and no one really wants to view normal corporate update videos as they are a bit dull.

How Leading Hotels of the World have apologised

Here is the text of their apology [Currently visible on their website]

Thank you so much for your continued patience with The Leading Hotels of the World. We are extremely sorry for the inconveniences we have caused and regret to advise you that the USD 19.28 email promotion scheduled for tomorrow October 2nd shall be postponed.

Although our original back-up plan provided a viable solution for the 150,000 people who were registered, it was met with some confusion over submission procedures and timing. In addition, we have become increasingly concerned that a large number of non-registered respondents plan to submit forms which would inundate the system and greatly diminish your chances of securing a USD 19.28 rate.

In view of this, please do not email your form tomorrow. You will most likely receive an error message we have put in place as a safety mechanism.

We are sincerely committed to restoring your faith in our brand and do not want to risk disappointing you again. We are working tirelessly to develop a solution that will be fair for you and all registered participants. We will email you next week with further details.

Sincerely,

Ted Teng
President & CEO
The Leading Hotels of the World, Ltd.

In comparison to a video, this just doesn’t really work. The 400 bloggers who wrote negative posts are (in the main) sensible people. They want to write a balanced blog (i.e. not just negative stories). They are crying out for some amazing response from Leading Hotels of the World so that they can publish a followup blog post saying how wonderful the hotel company has reacted to their little problem. A youtube video is easy to integrate with a blog – and can’t be manipulated by the blogger. Your message remains untainted and serves a “followup post” on a plate.

Instead, the LHW text is a standard apology. Not only that, but it lets us easily take apart the words used. Actually, that sounds interesting. Lets do that.

Thank you so much for your continued patience with The Leading Hotels of the World. We are extremely sorry for the inconveniences we have caused and regret to advise you that the USD 19.28 email promotion scheduled for tomorrow October 2nd shall be postponed. 

Patience. Not sure I would have used that word. It “frames” the content as if you should have been impatient. If only 10% of people had lost their patience – now 100% of people who read this apology are impatient.

Although our original back-up plan provided a viable solution for the 150,000 people who were registered, it was met with some confusion over submission procedures and timing.

This reads as “we planned this just fine – its your fault our promotion didn’t work or that you didn’t understand what we meant”. Yeah, that will help with an apology.

In addition, we have become increasingly concerned that a large number of non-registered respondents plan to submit forms which would inundate the system and greatly diminish your chances of securing a USD 19.28 rate.

eh? So instead of upsetting the 150,000 people who are registered for the promotion – LHW now want to upset all those non-registered respondents. The non-registered want to book your hotels. Don’t LHW understand that? Upsetting 150,000 was a bad move – but upsetting a whole new group (while apologising to the first group) is an even worse idea.

In view of this, please do not email your form tomorrow. You will most likely receive an error message we have put in place as a safety mechanism.

Yes. Lets make it look like the error is done on purpose. That will convince everyone. 

Overall, not very convincing. 

What I would have done with the LHW apology

• Added a photo of the CEO to the apology page (so you can see who they are)
• Personalise it a bit more (My team and I are sincerely committed vs We are sincerely committed). No one wants an apology from a corporate – instead we want apologies from humans.
• Make it clear this is an apology - the only use of the word sorry is for the inconvenience….. I would have put the word “Sorry” in big text (as a heading) above the main text….. that would have made it clear this was an apology. 
• Sent it to a copywriter. Someone who knows how words work and can be manipulated. Would have only cost 800 USD to get rewritten
• A video would have been even better…..

Still not too late to fix this…… those 400 bloggers will publish if something (like a video) is given to them in the next couple of days…… but two weeks time it will be old news….. hence the opportunity will be lost. 

Incidentally, if you are interested in travel blogging come along in London to the travel blog camp – on the evening of the 11th November 2008 (during World Travel Market). I will be speaking there.

If you want to be notified next time something is published sign up for email alerts, subscribe to the RSS feed or say hello via Twitter @alexbainbridge. Thank you for reading!