Indigo incident: When competitor airlines did not take the ambush bait

A lot has been written, debated and tweeted about the Indigo incident, where the airline’s ground staff were seen assaulting a male passenger at the Delhi airport in a widely circulated video. Though the incident took place on October 15, 2017, the video (incidentally shot by another staffer of Indigo) came to light only last week and evinced strong reactions from all quarters. 

What came in for even further flak was the way Indigo handled the entire incident – it first sacked the staffer who had shot the video on his mobile phone and put it up on social media. After angry reactions on social media, the airline sacked the staff who had beaten up the passenger and issued a public apology to the aggrieved passenger – almost a month after the incident. 

And yes, though the unfortunate incident was a ripe occasion for some interesting ambush marketing action, competitor airlines showed remarkable restraint, with the exception of Air India. 

For a few hours though, an ad that hit out at Indigo that was purported to be released by Jet Airways went viral on Twitter. The online ad stated: “We beat our competition, not you.” 

It was a fake ad and Jet Airways released a statement the same afternoon, clarifying: “Jet Airways did not commission the creative being shared on social media platforms, in context of a recent event concerning another domestic airline. The creative does not reflect our philosophy and ethos and is, in fact, in bad taste.” 

However, of all the airlines, Air India came up with a couple of cheeky ads on Twitter referring to the incident and taking on Indigo without naming it, of course. One of the ads said, “We raise our hands only to say Namaste”, while the other ad said, “Unbeatable service”, in which ‘beat’ was highlighted in blue colour (Indigo sports blue colour) and the rest of the ad was in Air India’s red colour. 

The Indigo incident reminds one of the incident where a doctor was dragged off an overbooked United Airlines flight in Chicago and some other incidents where passengers were ill-treated by the airline. 

Ambush marketing in the airline industry is nothing new. One may recall the Kingfisher and Jet Airways face-off in an outdoor ad some years back. It was the time when Kingfisher was having a good run, which had forced Jet Airways to rebrand. Jet came up with an outdoor ad that proclaimed: “We have changed”. The hoarding was located at Mumbai’s Cadbury Junction, near Jet CEO Naresh Goyal’s residence. In a coup of sorts, Kingfisher bought the space just above Jet’s hoarding and placed its own ad that cheekily said, “We made them change!!” 

Some years before that – in 1996 to be precise – Pepsi virtually stole Coca-Cola’s thunder during the ICC Cricket World Cup. While Coca-Cola came out with an ad blitz highlighting its official sponsor tag for the World Cup, Pepsi ran ads with a catchline that caught the nation’s imagination: “Nothing official about it.” 

In more recent times, one saw similar hoarding wars when Arnab Goswami’s Republic TV was launched. A hoarding put up at Noida’s Film City stated: “Arnab with you soon.” Meanwhile, India Today TV strategically placed its hoarding next to Republic TV’s, which featured one of its star anchors and proclaimed: “Anjana reached and waiting.” 

And, in response to Times Now’s contention that Republic TV cannot use the phrase “Nation wants to know” in its communication or programming (“Nation wants to know” was Arnab’s signature line while he was with Times Now), Republic TV’s outdoor ads splashed across cities countered: “The nation still wants to know.” 

Coming back to the Indigo case, while it definitely is a PR nightmare for the airline, competitor airlines have so far not taken advantage of the situation at Indigo’s cost even as they are gearing up for the upcoming Christmas-New Year holiday period. 

Probably, it is a Twitter user who has had a field day as he/ she came up with what could be the tagline of some airlines in India:

Jet Airways: We beat our competition.

Indigo: We beat our customers.

Air India: Our customers beat us.