Malaysia Airlines will bounce back from its annus horribilis “stronger, healthier and more capable of moving forward”, according to the brand’s global marketing boss.

Speaking to M&M Global at last month’s Festival of Media Asia Pacific alongside IPG Mediabrands’ Asia regional president, Prashant Kumar (watch the full interview below), Dean Dacko explained how the airline has used personalised digital marketing to recover from the disappearance of flight MH370 and shooting down of MH17.

“We never imaged we would be dealing with one incident, never mind two. The only way we managed to get through that was by leveraging the tools that we had built really for purely business purposes, as a transformation to a truly digital business,” said Dacko.

“The message going out is that, what you need to do in your own business is to engage, participate and be part of a personalised relationship with your customer. This is regardless of something bad happening. We just happened to fall into a situation where two of the biggest events in history [impacted our brand].”

Kumar agreed that preparation is vital, arguing that brands must ensure the “machinery” is ready to handle whatever may come their way: “Crisis spreads like the speed of like in today’s world, which made the whole situation more difficult. But if you have the right infrastructure, in terms of social media and digital marketing, then you are extremely well placed to be able to roll out whatever you intend to in a fast time. It was a challenge, but we had the right machine.”

And Dacko reiterated his belief that the “resilience” of the Malaysia Airlines brand will see it not only return to prominence, but become an even greater success.

“One of the things we’re pleased about is the strength and resilience of the Malaysia Airlines brand. We’re not out of the woods by any means, and the reality is it is very difficult to be profitable as an airline regardless of our situation, so we still have a lot of work to do with regards to restructuring, repositioning and retooling.

“But we’re very confident that we will be successful. We went through the ultimate worst of what anybody could imagine but we’re going to come out even better out the other side, stronger, healthier, and more capable of moving forward,” said Dacko.