About This Case Study
This is a retrospective strategic analysis of a real communications challenge, not actual Comms Threader output. It illustrates how strategic scaffolding structures thinking from problem to narrative.
Real Threader outputs depend on your context, uploads, and decisions. See actual tool usage in the Boeing case study or explore best practices.
Boeing
Rebuilding Trust After Catastrophe
The Golden Thread
Problem: This is not a reputation problem. It is a licence-to-operate problem. Boeing cannot talk its way back to trust when the same aircraft is still flying and quality failures continue.
Tension: Regulators, airlines, and the public need to trust Boeing with their lives, but every communications effort about safety reminds them why they stopped trusting in the first place.
Message: For an industry that needs Boeing to function, Boeing earns the right to operate by proving change through evidence, not by asserting it through messaging.
Platform: Replace safety rhetoric with visible, verifiable proof of systemic change that others can confirm.
Story
The Brief: Two crashes of the 737 Max killed 346 people. Investigations revealed Boeing prioritised production speed over safety, misled the FAA, and punished internal dissent. The aircraft was grounded for 20 months. A door plug blowout in January 2024 reignited every narrative the company was trying to move past.
Challenge Reframe: This is not a reputation problem. It is a licence-to-operate problem. Boeing cannot talk its way back to trust when the same aircraft is still flying and quality failures continue.
Sector Convention: Aerospace companies declare safety is their number one priority while structuring incentives, timelines, and culture around production speed and shareholder returns.
Audience
Priority Stakeholder: The FAA and Aviation Regulators
Stakeholder Tension: They must be seen as tough on Boeing to prove they are not a captured regulator, yet they need Boeing to succeed because the global aviation system depends on two viable aircraft manufacturers.
Message
Message Hierarchy: For regulators who must hold Boeing accountable while needing it to function, Boeing is the manufacturer that submits to scrutiny rather than managing it, because evidence of change is more durable than promises of change.
What We Won't Say: Safety is our number one priority. We have learned our lessons. We are a different company now. Our aircraft are the safest in the sky.
Plan
Comms Direction: Withdraw from proactive safety messaging entirely and let independently verified operational data, regulatory milestones, and engineering transparency speak on Boeing’s behalf.
Frame: Narrative Territories
The Open Book
Radical transparency with regulators and media. Publish quality data. Invite independent audits. Make the factory floor visible.
Feel: Institutional, accountable, evidence-led
The Engineers’ Company
Recentre the narrative on Boeing’s 170,000 engineers. Let the people who build aircraft speak about what has changed, without corporate framing.
Feel: Human, credible, ground-up
The Long Fix
Explicitly frame recovery as a decade-long process. Reject quick-fix narratives. Set public milestones and report against them.
Feel: Sober, patient, structurally honest
What Actually Happened
Boeing’s communications have oscillated between corporate contrition and defensive legalism. CEO Kelly Ortberg, appointed in August 2024, shifted tone toward operational focus, but the company continues to face whistleblower allegations, production delays, and a federal judge rejecting its original plea deal as inadequate. The narrative remains largely controlled by regulators and media, not by Boeing.
Why It Failed
- Repeated “safety is our priority” messaging without operational proof eroded credibility further
- Leadership instability (three CEOs in five years) prevented any consistent narrative from taking hold
- Each new incident (door plug, whistleblower, production cap) reset the trust clock to zero
- The gap between corporate messaging and factory-floor reality was visible to regulators and journalists
- Boeing’s case demonstrates that communications cannot substitute for operational change, only amplify it