I do find this caper quite interesting. A supposedly well-equipped, customer-focussed and market-savvy organisation makes a huge blunder, and unceremoniously withdraws the mistaken offer. Then some marketing people debate whether this was a ruse or not. For people who profess to know about marketing and who pass judgement on Virgin Blue, for or against, it is interesting whether those marketeers can make sense of this issue or not. It’s a nice test.

So yes, I am scrutinising the issue and, more importantly, the various responses. I wouldn’t say I’m angry, but I’m not impressed by the quality of some of the analysis.

I was also a “victim” of this – got the upgrade to Gold email, then the takeback email.

So what?

They made a mistake?

Or even if they did it on purpose … who cares?

Chill … it’s not that big a deal!

But this sort of mistake often offers an opportunity – a silver lining.

When you ADMIT a mistake, people tend to be pretty forgiving. Most businesses will do anyone other than admit a mistake.

Many. many years ago I worked for a large telecommunications company, back in the days when there was only Telstra, Optus and 2-3 other players.

Our tech team got a tad excited one day and ACCIDENTALLY “churned” a bunch of people from Tesltra to us. And by a bunch, I mean many thousands. These were people who already had their long distance with us, but due to some “regulatory stuff”, they were technically still with Telstra. And before we churned them, we needed a signed form we didn’t yet have.

After we got over the panic, we asked Telstra to take them back. Which they couldn’t without the signed paperwork WE should have had before churning them to us.

Back to the panic. Our only option was to send a letter of apology to them all, explaining our mistake. We had to send them a form to churn back – but we of course also pointed out how much cheaper we were than Telstra.

We braced ourselves for outrage. Angry calls. Complaints to ombudsman.

Instead, we got MANY calls to the Customer service centre THANKING us for being honest about our mistake. People waxed lyrical about how rare it was for a big company to own up.

And literally almost NO-ONE bothered to “churn back”.

Why do I tell this story?

Sometimes a mistake is a mistake. We all make them, and we will all continue to make them.

ADMIT IT to your customers, and maybe it won’t turn in the big disaster it could be. It could even prove a bonus.

And as for Virgin, it may sound simplistic, but for my two cents, they should have honoured the offer. I guarantee, with a bit of creative thought, they would have been able to reap unexpected benefits, despite the ‘cost’ – and made a bunch of people very happy, making them fantastic brand advocates.

It seems obvious that someone just pressed the send button to the wrong list – something that is very easy to do and is obviously embarrassing. Well done to them for getting onto it within 3 hours with another mass emailing.

I agree that the current page does not have an Offer. It looks to me as if they have simply added a quick disclaimer at the top of the existing text on the gold page…Text that looks the same as before the mistake and is simply there to inform people as to what is a gold membership.

Though – a quick special offer would have been a good marketing tactic.

As far as Virgin Blue having carefully orchestrated PR, I posted what I thought at the time. I was not contacted by VB. It was just my honest opinion – and still is.

With regard to this being a ‘strategic’ decision…LOL. Not only is it not marketing,evenif it was it would be a tactic…not a strategy.

Having been a victim to this “mistake” I was very p@#$$%$ to say the least!!

After trawling the web, I could not help notice the disproportionately high number of “similar” blog posts absolving Virgin Blue and putting positive spin on the issue and portraying the “victims” as mean and stingy! Quite alot of the “positive posts” looked like nice “polite” posts along the lines of “get over it, you were not entitled to the offer in the first place….Vigin are great…etc”.

It looks very suspiciously like orchestrated damage control by Virgin Blue who mobilised an army of bloggers to do this “positive” posting. Hell I would have!!

Is it damage contol of carefully mobilised PR?

I can’t believe that over 50% of the posts were excusing Virgin! This totally goes against traditional consumer outrage! Is Virgins brand loyalty that good? If a retailer advertises a price or promotion incorrectly, they are obliged to honour it. Why is Virgin not doing the same in this case?

Another thing, there is no such thing as bad PR – look see even I am writing about Virgin Blue and this will elevated their rankings in Google etc through syndicated linkages etc….

Clever move Virgin Blue…I think you have invented a new marketing channel….

(For the record I still fly with Virgin Blue) and have as yet NOT upgraded to Gold membership.

In particular, there is no “offer” associated with the apology, just a screen of propaganda about how fantastic gold is once you get there.

Whatever marketing experts attribute marketing smarts to this cock-up are belying their own lack of marketing sense. It’s not at all like iSnack2.0. That was a new product sitting on a shelf waiting to be bought. The Virgin Gold Upgrade on the other hand was a gift that was taken back. That doesn’t pique my interest or tantalise — it offends.