TNGDG – Part 3 – What does media attention do to you?

So lets look at what media attention did to me during the last days.
Well I am still alive and my head has not be chopped off. That’s a good thing.

Working according to a motto from a German Minister:

Do not worry. Check whether your name is spelled correctly. Move on. Tomorrow is another day with a new newspaper.

So lets see what happened that day, December 2nd 2008.

1) My name is all over the place in many online newspapers:

• Brisbanetimes.com.au
• Sydney Morning Herald
• The Age
• Western Australia today

and some more

Update (5th of December 2008)

• The Travelmole

2) Some Airline Forums have picked up on it

• Professional Pilots Rumor Network
• Frequent Flyer Forum
• Airliners.net

And all of the above with some great comments

Wow. That put a smile on my face. Unprofessional perhaps, but I give him props for creativity.

Very ‚Imaginative‘!

Well done for having a go, an original way of having a gripe at company culture.

They should hire him back for being so creative!

Laminate it, and put it in every seat-back pocket!

And I like especially this one from „Standby„

… so he missed a promotion and this is the response ..me thinks he needs to go back to school to do an engineering degree so he can Build a bridge and get over it.

 

3) Blogs are posting about it. Found one so far

• Purple Pawn – Modern Board Games

The game plays something like Snakes and Ladders with cards, and the first to actually make a decision, which means reach the last square, is the winner. Apparently, this could take some time.

Update:

• Jaunted – Snakes And Ladders: Disgruntled Virgin Blue Edition (5th of December 2008):

But the fact that the airline employed staff who are this creative and clever in the first place is probably a strange pat on the back. Play the game at your own peril–there are a lot of nasty rescue slides to fall down.

• The Melcrum Blog (6th of December 2008):

It’s all quite a giggle for a „Friday funny“, but what company benefits can be gained from it? In the news article, the reporter says that Koerting took ideas from colleagues to create some of the action points, so chances are, he’s not the only disgruntled employee – the difference is, he spoke up about it.

If I were one of the managers or communications staff at the company, depending on the circumstances, I might use this example as a chance to have transparent discussions with employees about the issues brought up in the game. Or make sure that there were mechanisms in place for staff to air their concerns/irritations in a fair, open environment without fear of reprisal.

• The Both Benchmark (11th of December 2008):

The question now is what is Virgin Blue going to do about it? Will they use it as an opportunity to have a frank discussion with staff and find a way to make sure that convo is constant? From the outside looking in, Virgin Blue in Aussie and Pacific Blue in New Zealand have always seemed to exude a fun, funky culture – perhaps that was so at the beginning but it has dwindled now?

 

4) The numbers of visitors to my blog exploded that day
See the following graph from Google Analytics

Which is incredible if you think that no link was placed to my blog from the articles mentioned. Everybody visiting the blog had to google me (go to google page, type my name, search, go through results and click on blog).
Several hurdles that usually are higher than you think and users really have to interested in finding out.

5) My Profile on Xing got accessed by many unknown users.
Its a business network similar to LinkedIn and you can track there how has looked at your profile over time.

So you can see what happens after a single mail to some former colleagues, papers are writing about you, forums discuss your topic, blogs are posting about you, your own blog is been flooded with visitors and your social network profiles are accessed by unknown visitors.