The best complaint letter ever

Jan 28, 2009

Having returned from Japan yesterday the memory of aeroplane food is clear in my mind (see some fine examples here to refresh your memory).

After coming across Oliver Beale’s letter to Richard Branson today about the “culinary journey of hell” he was put through on his flight I was grateful that I didn’t fly Virgin (however I’d like to ask someone at JetStar when teriyaki chicken rolls became popular for breakfast?)

Aside from being a great laugh it will be interesting to follow this story to see how far it goes.

It is fresh on Twitter, a bunch of blogs, and is being touted as ‘the best complaint letter ever’ elsewhere on the internet.  It has already hit some newspapers in the UK and was on ABC radio today and on Channel 9 news this morning (as one of the top online news stories).

I’m predicting a barrage of industry comment regarding Richard’s response and the official Virgin response from those in communications and branding and also expect that it will be used widely as a branding case study.

Then there will be t-shirts emblazoned with “It’s mustard Richard.  MUSTARD” and perhaps we’ll see a spoof website such as richardbransonkilledmyhamster.com.

I wonder if Richard will be so bold as to include crime-scene cookies on Virgin’s in-flight menu?  Either way the letter is set to go down in history.

Posted by Renee Creer

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 at 4:45 pm. It is filed under PR, Reputation Management and tagged with Blogs, Branding, Complaint letter, PR, Richard Branson, Twitter, Viral emails, Virgin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.