What would you think if you found out that the video message by Air India CEO Campbell Wilson in the aftermath of the deadly, tragic plane crash of an Air India Boeing 787 in Ahmedabad was mostly plagiarized word-for-word?
You may also replace ‘would’ with ‘should’. Should you say or think anything at all if you found out that it was plagiarized?
Let me get the facts out of the way first.
Here are the transcripts of two CEO-led video messages.
The one on the left is by American Airlines CEO Robert Isom, following the crash of an American Eagle aircraft on January 30, 2025. The one on the right is the transcript of Campbell Wilson’s video statement.
The videos are available here, for comparison.
As you can see, barring specific details about the plane and location, most of the statement is identical, word-for-word and sometimes sentence-for-sentence.
Now, let me ask again: What would/should you think when you realize that the statement is plagiarized/reused?
One possible, impulsive reaction may be, ‘Did he really mean what he said?’.
But then, such reactions are possible even when you see a stock birthday greeting from a friend on WhatsApp or Facebook. Or when you see an obviously-AI-generated comment to your post on LinkedIn. Of course, the magnitude and importance of Campbell’s statement is phenomenally more than any of the other mundane responses/statements made by people without thinking or using AI.
The question to ask then is if the act of plagiarism reduces the impact of Campbell’s statement.
If you did not know about the plagiarism, you wouldn’t have a specific feeling about it. He came. He spoke factual details. He left.
What if you became aware of the plagiarism eventually/shortly?
You may also argue that it is utterly pointless to get pedantic about plagiarism in a situation like this. That he offered a statement swiftly, on video, is the only thing that matters. That he showed up is what matters.
But then, most airlines (as also most brands) prepare for such contingencies. Showing up in front of the world at the earliest is part of a leader’s job – a baseline expectation of the job, in other words.
It is also part of corporate communications and PR (SOPs) standard operating procedures to anticipate and imagine all potential scenarios, have a crisis communication process and specific templates, and use them when a crisis does occur. This is one of the most crucial aspects of corporate communications anyway. And planning ahead for the potential of a crash is the most basic task of any airline. It’s an eventuality that has happened to most airline companies.
So, to be caught plagiarizing a speech of another airline CEO from just 4 odd months ago makes it seem like there was inadequate planning on part of Air India’s corporate communications team and its PR team.
There is another reason to assume this inadequacy in planning.
Such speeches are not written by the CEOs themselves. I know this for sure because I have spent 20+ years in the communications space, a decade of which was in corporate communications where my job was to write such speeches for CEOs and leaders.
So, it’s possible that someone in Air India’s corporate communications team found Isom’s speech to be good enough during the time crunch (the news of the crash started trickling in the afternoon of June 12, 2025, while the CEO’s statement went live at 7:14pm on the same day), replaced factual details in that speech’s transcript, and handed it over to Campbell.
But then observe the fact that the factual details segment is devoid of any details regarding the location of the crash and the fatalities on ground, at the residential quarters of BJ Medical College. It talks only about the passengers on board the flight, even as Isom’s speech makes a mention of the military aircraft that collided with the jet.
Campbell would not have any details of the count of students or doctors at BJ Medical college, of course, as much as he has details of who travelled in his company’s plane. But to not even mention a detail of where the plane crashed, something that was widely known during the day, is a big miss probably because the corporate communications team used another recent speech as template without applying enough local context to this specific crash.
In fact, Campbell’s speech talks about being focused on the needs of ‘our passengers, crew members, their families and loved ones’ but nothing about the potential victims on the ground, and their families and loved ones.
To be sure, such speeches are performances by business leaders. They need to be ready to perform to sound sincere and empathetic while delivering such tragic news. Whether they really feel for what they are saying can only be vouched for by people close to them. As audience, we can only assume that they mean what they say in such tough situations.
And the knowledge of plagiarism may erode credibility in the delivery of the speech. Missing details about the potential casualities on ground, even more so.
Think of this video from the perspective of public perception. This is exactly the job of corporate communications professionals – to consider how public perception could change based on what their leaders say in public. So, if the perception can lead to questioning the credibility and sincerity of the leaders’ words when the knowledge of plagiarism seeps in, why let that situation even occur?
Instead of assuming, ‘Who will come to find out such details?’, why not assume, ‘What would happen to our brand’s credibility should such details surface?’?
In fact, The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has detailed crisis communications SOPs and templates that most airlines use as base material to work on their messages. But following the template is one thing and not anticipating people finding out that entire sentences were used as-is and the perception it may create is entirely another. Managing perceptions IS the work of corporate communications.
In other words, why not anticipate the possibility of a loss of credibility owing to plagiarism and consciously draft sentences and speech afresh (regardless of using any earlier speech as a template or using AI support) by making them seem fresh, genuine, and empathetic?
And yes, don’t forget that Campbell starts his speech with, ‘Good afternoon’. Isom just said ‘Hello everyone’. June 12th was anything but ‘good’ for India. It’s a pity that both Campbell and Air India’s corporate communications team overlooked such basic details.
That brings me to an incidental point – even in terms of performance, Campbell’s statement left a lot to be desired. Observe his speech in comparison to Isom’s speech. Isom’s head and eye movement makes the utterances seem real while Campbell’s stiff posture makes it obvious that he is reading from a teleprompter (which is not a wrong at all). The one job of a CEO in such situations is to sound sincere.
Most business leaders are media trained thoroughly before they can speak front of the camera on behalf of the company. And Campbell is a veteran in the aviation industry with a 15+ year stint in Singapore Airlines (that takes media training and corporate communication very, very seriously) and previous stints as CEO at Scoot, the low-cost subsidiary of Singapore Airlines.
So, it is a surprise to me that Air India is handling its corporate communications this way, if I see both the content and delivery together.