The Triple Bottom Line Blog

If you're a business executive with any doubts about how quickly your company's reputation can be transformed in today's superheated, interconnected, four-news-cycles-a-day environment, consider JetBlue. More specifically, consider the fact that, at least in some circles, the company's name has now morphed from a proper noun into a verb--one with a decidedly pejorative meaning.

I learned about this phenomenon while browsing the latest issue of GQ in my dentist's office and just saw it confirmed on The Urban Dictionary website:

JetBlued: Euphemistic way of expressing someone got screwed or ripped off.

Etymology: Originated shortly after the February 2007 series of mistakes that lefts countless JetBlue customers stuck in airplanes and airport terminals for many hours.

Jack: Check out this amazing diamond ring I bought for my wife on the internet.
Steve: Bro, that's clearly a fake ring.
Jack: You're kidding right?
Steve: Nah, man. You got JetBlued.

What makes this all the more amazing is the fact that the exact same verb was being used not so long ago with a very different definition, as indicated by this item on Fast Company magazine's blog posted in March, 2004:

I had lunch today with a former editor who was talking about a recent trip he'd made to the West Coast. "So I 'JetBlued' out to California . . . ," he said nonchalantly, with little notice of the verb he'd just created. Like "Googled," which implies not only the search tool used, but the better search experience, "JetBlued" says he'd done a lot more than fly on the booming low-fare airline. Rather, he'd flown while eating his choice of snacks, watching TV in a comfy leather seat--and spending much less.

So which meaning of "JetBlued" will end up sticking? That depends, in large measure, on whether new CEO David Barger can restore the company's once-uniquely-positive connection with customers (while turning around its recently lackluster financial performance).

For now, the customer-driven "re-branding" of JetBlue is an object lesson in how even a single misstep--in this case, one horrendous day of performance driven by terrible weather and a few very bad, very costly on-the-ground decisions by a handful of overstressed managers--can do huge damage to a great reputation built painstakingly over decades.

Today's customers aren't inclined to cut you a lot of slack, no matter how much you may have done for them yesterday. So being a "corporate good guy" is not just an essential part of twenty-first-century leadership--it's also an incredibly demanding, 365-day, 24-hour job.

Labels: Communications and Marketing, JetBlue