Is anybody awake in bankrupt Northwest Airlines’ PR department?
How could anyone—even somebody with a brain the size of a pea—let the company distribute tips booklets titled “101 Ways to Save Money” to employees whose pay has just been slashed?
The booklets offer these tips:
- Shop in thrift stores
- Take a date for a walk in the woods or on the beach.
- Don’t be “shy about pulling something you like out of trash.”
Northwest has stopped distributing the booklets and says the tips were “insensitive.”
Thanks to Gayle Lantz, an expert in leadership issues for CEOs and senior executives, and a member of The Publicity Hound Mentor Program, for flagging me to this one.
I flew Northwest, Albq to Montreal, just 10 days ago. Will I ever fly on NWA again? No. It wasn’t that the plane was taken to the Fix-It barn after five hours of delay, or that a second ancient DC-9, at the gate next to mine, was also taken to the barn 20 minutes later. I was grateful for the caution. It was the fact they offered no one so much as a drink of water or a meal ticket during that time, and had the nerve to charge a buck for a pack of nuts and raisins (on a $700 ticket) when we finally did take off in an old plane that worked.
About the new airport security measures: Now would be an excellent time for AMTRAK and GREYHOUND to upgrade their gear and do a publicity blitz.
Barbara Mayfield, Publicist
Thanks so much for addressing this situation. The following news release went out to over 1500 media outlets this morning in response to the Northwest Airlines tips booklet event.
For Immediate Release
Contact: Paulette Ensign 858-481-0890
Avoiding Layoff Tips Booklet and Other Corporate Promotion Disasters
Quite recently Northwest Airlines created and distributed a booklet titled “101 Ways to Save Money” to 60 Northwest Airlines employees apparently designed to provide helpful advice to a group of employees facing layoffs.
However well intended the effort, the booklet contained several ideas that the recipients found patently offensive and personally demeaning
The release of the booklet caused such a furor among the employees that Northwest Airlines pulled the plug on the project and ceased distribution of the publication.
Long time tips booklet publishing expert Paulette Ensign says that the booklet fiasco serves as an excellent reminder of what not to do if you are creating and distributing a booklet.
Sure, the booklet was intended to help people and it might have actually had some excellent ideas in it.
But some of the ideas contained in this little gem antagonized and angered the very people it was intended to help. This could have been easily avoided.
A timely prepublication review and a little common sense would have quickly allowed managers to realize that people who are about to lose their jobs were not going to take kindly to advice like this:
“Don’t be shy about pulling something you like out of the trash.”
“Borrow a dress for a big night out or go to a consignment shop.”
“Go to pawn shops to buy jewelry cheap.”
“Go to second hand clothing stores to buy hand-me-downs.”
“Dig through garbage for food.”
The booklet contained other equally demeaning and offensive tips.
Yes, a little common sense could lead one to conclude that some cost-cutting suggestions would not be well received by professional employees in otherwise good standing.
But that apparently didn’t happen.
There are some very useful lessons learned that can be derived from this experience.
Ensign recommends that the next time you design and prepare a booklet intended to help a certain group of people who are impacted by a management action:
1) Ask a group of the affected employees for their own ideas about how to help mitigate impacts.
2) Have these same employees review the ideas proposed for publication and agree by consensus on the ideas that will go in your booklet.
3) Once you have these ideas finalized, get the new booklet out immediately and promote it like crazy.
Getting people involved in efforts like this on tips booklets specially designed to share a core set of ideas can be a very good thing that will help morale and communications, especially if it becomes a regular process that achieves excellence.
If you involve the employees in developing solutions to the problems the company faces you will improve morale and your bottom line at the same time.
For more information visit http://www.tipsbooklets.com
Paulette Ensign is a long-time booklet consultant who has developed and overseen tips booklets creation for thousands of publishers and companies worldwide.
Northwest is not the only company to suffer from the “oh yuck!” factor while trying to do the right thing. The Australian government is currently heavily advertising a website they have set up to help people with their money http://www.understandingmoney.gov.au/content/default.asp
The problem is the same as with Northwest … the content leaves people with a bad taste. In this case the free budget planner sets people up for failure as it is so user unfriendly that people will hate it.
Compare this approach to the exciting free “Personality Budgeting Quiz” at http://www.PersonalityBudgeting.com and you see that any company can leave a good taste in their people’s mouths by offering a link to something that is new and helpful.
This is extremely insensitive. Having less income should never be a reason to take away someone’s dignity.