Brand Disaster: How AA.com paid the price for firing Mr. X

SUP? Anyway, I’ve been bumping into various blog post related to Mr. X, the one that AA.com fired? You’re right! American Airlines has been the hottest topic in the web right now after firing an employee who was trying to be transparent where he responded to a blog post and cleared a few issues being raised by Dustin Curtis – furious AA.com customer.

Darn! This is another good example of a typical reputation disaster online. Now, how complicated it really is to manage your reputation online? To answer that, let’s look into AA.com’s case where the Company is now the subject of any BRAND related discussions in the web.

As you may know,web designer Dustin Curtis wrote an open letter to AA.com posted in his blog. In fact, Curtis mentioned in his blog post that AA.com was losing millions because of its poorly designed web site. He even went as far as suggesting a new design for the site – this guy really kicks ass in interface design. To Dustin’s surprise, a user experience designer at AA.com emailed him an amazing response describing some of the design problems faced in large corporations. (You should read his original article here and the response from Mr. X here)

“An hour after Dustin posted the response, American Airlines fired Mr. X.”

Now, that was really fast! What happened really was, “AA searched their exchange database for the text being posted, found the guy, and fired Mr. X on the spot. From what Dustin have learned, they also threatened him with legal action if he spoke to him again. Apparently, he broke his non-disclosure agreement by discussing the design process at AA.”

So, are you still that brave to violate your non-disclosure agreement? Well, I know it’s too harsh but the thing is, some companies are really that spontaneous in coming up with decisions pertaining to firing but not to improvements. Firing just needs one nod from the boss or a recommendation from HR, but with decision making in terms of improvement (innovation), expect a decade or two for it to be approve because these executives will surely run their own script just to please the boss. Tsk tsk tsk ..

As for the case, I’ve seen some mitigating factors (Mr. X whole point) that AA.com could have considered and use it to their advantage, but I guess they’re not really that particular on what they look like (BRAND) online though they’ve been bragging that they’re this and that when it comes to customer satisfaction.

No wonder the guys behind Cebu Pacific’s website can’t really appreciate my suggestion in going mobile for their boarding pass validation. They might be scared now after reading Mr X fate.