Getting Ahead In The Age Of Rage
By Christine Haughney Dare-Bryan, writing for Provoke Media
PR officials offer their greatest wisdom on how to lead through angry times.
CHICAGO — There’s no debate that society is living through an “age of rage” — from the murder of health care executives to the polarizing political debates that dominate news headlines. But at Provoke Media’s Global Summit, five of the top executives in the communications industry shared how they are navigating these challenging times.
“The dominant, negative narrative about companies today has become about fairness,” said Michael Maslansky, CEO, Maslansky + Partners whose firm has extensively researched what is provoking so much rage in Americans right now. “It used to be about caring. ‘You don’t care about me. You’re putting your interests before mine.’ It has now shifted, I think in line with a lot of the political conversation to be one that is much more about, ‘You are treating me unfairly, you are taking advantage of me.’”
Maslansky noted his research shows rage is less divided along political lines and more by age and affluence. He described the “richalantes” as the angriest of all Americans. He said they are “not the neediest population in a marketplace, but have the highest expectations about what they deserve from the market.” His research found they are “the most likely to say that violence is appropriate against executives who behave unethically.” They also harbor a lot of anger toward airlines and streaming companies.
But it’s not just anger that consumers feel toward companies. He noted that “63% of the population says that across 16 industries, when they do business with companies, that they expect those companies to never, rarely or only sometimes do the right thing.”
It’s a sentiment that Doug McGraw, JetBlue’s chief communications officer said he saw started during Covid, expanded during the Biden administration, when fliers felt more emboldened by the passengers rights regulations the administration introduced and grew with the proliferation of discount airlines promising cheap deals. He noted how much time he spends dealing with angry customers who write to JetBlue’s CEO when they are angry that they booked a nonrefundable plane ticket and now need to change their plans. He said that JetBlue spends a lot of time figuring out how best to respond to these challenges since it was founded on the goal of making travel pleasant again and preventing rage.
“In 2000, when we did our first flight, bringing humanity back to air travel meant a TV. It meant a leather seat and it meant free snacks. Basically the bar was actually very low,” said McGraw. “We have to constantly challenge ourselves about what that mission means today, what the consumer expects of us today.”
He added that the airline industry also receives far more attention.
“If it happens on the New York City subway, nobody pays attention. They look away. If it happens on an airplane, it’ll be on all the morning shows, all the news sites,” said McGraw. “There’s just a lot of combustible energy in the tin can in the air.”
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