AirAsia brand sentiments plummet after topless LinkedIn post by CEO

Airline company AirAsia has seen its brand sentiments plummet from 13.9% negative to 33.2% negative after its chief, Tony Fernandes, took to LinkedIn to share a topless photo of himself in the office getting a massage while conducting an online meeting, according to media intelligence firm CARMA Asia. 

Before this incident, sentiments of conversations about AirAsia on social media were 33.4% positive, 13.9% negative, and over 50% neutral, according to CARMA Asia.  However, following the incident, there was a significant shift in sentiment.

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Positive sentiment dropped considerably, decreasing from 33.4% to 14.8%. This suggests that the incident had a negative effect on how people perceive AirAsia, with a substantial decrease in the number of positive comments and discussions, said CARMA Asia. 

Conversely, negative sentiment increased substantially from 13.9% to 33.2%. This indicates that the incident had a polarising effect, leading to more negative comments and discussions in the aftermath, said CARMA Asia. 

These results came as a result of Fernandes posting a half-naked image of himself receiving a massage while also participating in an online meeting this week. 

“Got to love Indonesia and AirAsia culture that I can have a massage and do a management meeting,” he wrote in the post.

In a statement to MARKETING-INTERACTIVE, a spokesperson from the communications team at AirAsia said the unconventional sharing may have raised eyebrows for some, but the recent image was taken during a unique moment when Fernandes was multitasking, juggling a management meeting and a brief shoulder massage session.

“Everyone on the call, including our female management was asked if they are comfortable if he had a shoulder massage, after 18 hours of work. We have a fun, friendly and open culture at Capital A that values productivity, efficiency as well as transparency,” she said.

She added: 

Lastly, we want to note this image was shared with full approval from the PR department, and no comments were intentionally deleted.

This was in response to some claims by commenters on the now-deleted post that Fernandes was deleting negative comments on the controversial post. 

"This analysis highlights the importance of how incidents involving key company spokespeople can influence public perception," said Divika Jethmal, head of marketing at CARMA Asia. "In this case, the incident involving Fernandes had a pretty clear and significant impact on the sentiment surrounding AirAsia, with a drop in positive sentiment and a surge in negative sentiment," she said, adding that companies need to be mindful of how the actions of their leaders and C-suite can affect their brand image. 

True enough, several industry professionals have called out the post saying that it isn’t the best way to show off work culture. Others said that when AirAsia claimed to have an open culture, this isn’t what was expected.

Amongst those who spoke out was Rebecca Nadilo, the new managing director at iris Singapore who said that she doesn’t believe women in the company would feel comfortable or safe in this context. “Given you're the boss, they likely won't challenge you or say anything. Please for their sake, listen to the comments you've deleted on this post. You are clearly a smart leader that cares about culture, but this isn't the way to create a supportive, safe one,” she said.

In a statement to MARKETING-INTERACTIVE, Nadilo said the tone-deaf post was not open but rather offensive.

“I really don’t think many women would have felt comfortable in this situation, and people cannot hide behind ‘Well I asked them’ because when you’re the boss, you have to assume people aren’t going to feel confident or comfortable speaking up against you,” she said.

Communications practitioner Charu Srivastava, founder of TriOn & Co added that whatever his intentions might have been, the post and the actual actions are “absolutely inappropriate”.

“Let us call a spade a spade - this is a post about a chief executive of a company conducting a work meeting while getting massaged, topless. In my opinion, we should be very worried if any company or leader is even debating whether this behaviour is acceptable or not,” she added.

She added that the power imbalance of the top “guy” in a company deciding to do this leaves little room for juniors to raise objections and creates precedence of what is proper workplace conduct.

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