Why You Must Deal With Negative PR
Posted by Matt Singley on July 13, 2009 under Business, Marketing Tools, Social Networks, Twitter, YouTube | 
33 Comments to Read
One unhappy customer has created a PR disaster for United Airlines
Have you seen the uber-popular YouTube video “United Breaks Guitars”? I’ve embedded it at the bottom of this post so you can, it’s well worth 4:36 of your time to see this creative and funny look at poor customer service. Seems Dave Carroll from the band Sons of Maxwell had his guitar broken while flying on United Airlines, and just a handful of days ago released a music video detailing his complaint. If we take what he says as truth, he spent a year trying to get some resolve and was repeatedly told “no”. Personally I believe him because I’ve dealt with similar issues while traveling, and the corporate “no” is just too common.
If you run a business, big or small, you need to pay attention to what is happening in the world. The days of burying customer complaints are over, you need to develop a social media strategy to handle social media issues.
United Airlines has a mess on their hands, but they’re finally starting to deal with it. With over 2 million views of the “United Breaks Guitars” video as of this writing, United knows that they need to address this before they have an even bigger revolt on their hands. Good news travels quickly, but bad news goes viral when creativity and humor are involved. Armed with nothing more than a $200 HD video camera and a little bit of time and energy, an unhappy customer can share their story with millions of people, and that is not something you want to have to figure out how to respond to publically.
What You Can Do About It
- Monitor the social media space. It’s critical that you know if your company or brand is mentioned, and there is no excuse for not having this information delivered to you. Something as simple as Google Alerts allows you to monitor web spaces for mentions in blogs, tweets and forums and can be delivered to your Feed Reader or email.
- Respond quickly. Notice I didn’t just say “respond”. These days quick is necessary, although you don’t want to rush in and say something foolish. If you are doing a good job of monitoring, you should be aware of most instances of your company being mentioned, and it takes 15 seconds to craft a response on Twitter…so do it! Dave thinks quick is a key element as well, he just posted a video response to United and mentions that they did respond, “generously but LATE…”
- Add value. Don’t just reply to inquiries or complaints with “I hear you”, add some value. Direct the person to a resource that will be helpful to them, or if it’s within your power, tell them that you will check into it personally and then be sure to follow up.
- Be sincere. Social media is (for better and worse) a place of great transparency, and as such consumers can smell B.S. a mile away. Don’t give lip service to your customers, treat them like you would like to be treated.
I recently spoke to a group of business owners about the need for a social media presence. Many of them were struggling with the notion of stepping into the digital space, if for no other reason that they felt they couldn’t find the time to engage customers. As we look at examples like “United Breaks Guitars” and dozens of other user generated “campaigns” , you need to ask yourself one question…
Can you afford to NOT have a social media presence?
Additional comments powered by BackType
Michael Espinosa said,
In the vein of AA and bad pr I’m wondering if you have seen this – http://bit.ly/PFtg7 – article. You’ll see that an employee of the AA web team writes back talking about the concerns. Once AA caught wind of the letter they fired him.
Matt Singley said,
@Michael…I had not seen that, just read through (most) of it. I didn’t catch anything about the AA employee being fired though, did I miss it?
The Lesson from ‘United Breaks Guitars’ said,
[...] a good article about that: http://mattsingley.com/blog/2009/07/why-you-must-deal-with-negative-pr/ Share this [...]
Steve Cerruti said,
You can’t buy advertising like this, literally you can’t buy it. YouTube doesn’t sell pre-roll and there is no embedded advertising on Twitter. The most you can hope is that lightning strikes and you create a campaign that grabs attention.
My gut feeling tells me that “United Breaks Guitars” does not damage United’s image in any significant way while it does get their brand out in front of millions of people. The travelling public is fully aware of the possibility of damage or loss of personal possessions as well as the red tape involved in an attempt to be compensated. They also view it as an industry problem and not a carrier problem. Also, most of us don’t own a guitar, much less travel with one. We don’t identify well with the supposed victim.
I am reminded of a Gary Larson cartoon in which he depicts how dogs hear a different message than the owner thinks he is speaking. I would post a link or image, but Gary Larson has requested that his material not be posted on the Internet (a shame). I think it is the same here. Dave Carroll intends us to hear about how bad United is, instead we are being entertained and associate the good feelings with United and people with large mustaches.
United did need to jump on the wave of this issue. The correct response would have been a rebuttal song from a band composed of United baggage handlers. I would have commissioned a heavy metal title like, “Dave Carroll can’t pack.” Dave Carroll promised three songs and United should provide the environment and motivation for him to produce all three. Good for Dave, good for “Sons of Maxwell”, good for United and good for us.
Clean Cut Media said,
For those interested in some background on this story. I had written up a post a few days back with updates.
http://blog.cleancutmedia.com/video/united-breaks-guitars-video-by-dave-carroll
Creators, Reporters and Consumers » Matt Singley | Social Media Optimization said,
[...] of friends on Twitter, and sometimes they make big waves around the world, such as the case of “United Breaks Guitars”. Big or small, it doesn’t matter…the ability for the consumer to report is incredible and [...]
mattsingley said,
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