Blog homeNow with over 130,000 views…. and climbing fast
United Airlines have acknowledged the video via their Twitter account.
Could be an interesting airline social media case study to watch!
If you were advising United Airlines – what would you do right now?
- Say nothing?
- Solve the problem of the guitar…. but why solve it now when it hasn’t been solved previously (by all reports)
- Solve the guitar problem and ask the band to produce a new video
What would you do?
Say this video gets 500,000 views. Anything the airline does has to balance that right? Or should the airline just take it on the chin?
Come on folks…. so many people who follow this blog call themselves social media experts.. well show us a bit of your creative expertise then!
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United need to apologise and compose a song to the band back..and present a new guitar back to them –
I’m sure there is some music talent at the airline…
United needs to do more than acknowledge the problem and replace the guy’s guitar at this point. And they can’t just cut him a big check and hope this all goes away. They need a creative solution to this problem and I think a follow-up video could be a good thing, assuming they do it right.
Follow-up video could:
- Feature the band with all new equipment
- Has to poke fun at United
- Include United’s CEO singing backups?
How quickly will the original video scale up? Since roughly 8 hours ago it has accrued about 10k new views. If that continues, it will hit 500k in the next 2 weeks. Unlikely to continue at a steady rate–it will probably accrue views faster over the next few days and then taper off. 500k is realistic for sure.
I agree with Fiona but do you think it will damage United Airline’s brand or reputation? I don’t think so. It won’t harm the band that made the video and song neither.
It may not end up hurting the airline if they don’t do anything, but it’s quite conceivable that a well done video response might actually turn this around for them. If they do it well enough, they won’t simply have negated the damage, they will have have benefited.
I agree with Jeff in that they should include the band with all new equipment singing, but it should also feature some actual United Airlines Employees.
Sorry, Musingsfans – maybe I’m a little jaded by the stunts and supposed ‘viral’ ad campaigns of the past few months, but this has got marginally clever PR strategy written all over it.
Airline agency dreams up idea for social media thread, approaches band, reasonably high quality video produced, 150K-odd views on YT and counting, everyone wins, bingo…
Damaged reputation for United?
Hardly…
I would recommend option three. Solving the problem, buying new equipment for the band and paying them for producing a new video.
@Kevin
I can’t believe you called bs on this!
The youtube video itself has 1300 comments…. most of which are negative.
And Mr Carroll (the singer) has written a detailed story outlining exactly what happened!
If this really is a PR stunt then if that becomes public the backlash would be even worse than coming up with a video having fun at yourself in the first place!
If it is a PR stunt I look forward to you or DS getting to the bottom of it and it will be a great story!
Quite on CBC website from United Airlines statement:
“This has struck a chord with us. We’re going to contact him directly.”
Chord?!? Geddit…
Oh perlease…
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/music/story/2009/07/08/united-breaks-guitars.html
I don’t think it’s a PR stunt. But, interestingly there is a similar (but much better) song about Ryanair by Pelle Carlberg. I bet he wishes he’d done a video for it now! Given how viscous it is I think if he’d released it as a single he might well have had a call from Ryanair’s lawyers.
Here’s a link to it on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiaF-gDqZ7A&feature=related
Assuming that my good friend Mr May is a cynic – which he is
– and that this is a genuine complaint, the important thing is they don’t treat it as a special case.
The danger is slipping into a nasty Old Media habit: high-profile columnist moans about bad service, company gives them special treatment as a result. The fact that any punter can now (potentially) get that kind of profile for their complaint is to be welcomed, but the message ‘500k views will get you six brand new guitars and acres of press coverage, while Joe Traveller with a busted suitcase gets the legal minimum’ would be a disaster.
Just be honest about the fact that damage to baggage sometimes occurs (and not just to guitars, and not just on United) and be honest about what you as a company do about it. Try to ‘top’ this with another funny viral if you like – clearly getting eyeballs for the response is desirable – but don’t make a vid in which you give this chap better treatment than you would anonymous complainants…
I like Nathan’s perspective that buying new guitar would be a bad idea and set a tricky precedent that whoever creates a social media noise gets their concerns dealt with.
However many other comments suggest new instruments should be given as part of a deal.
On this one point….. any further comments about whether new instruments should be given or not? Happy to have comments with just a YES or a NO !
NO!
No. After all the publicity Taylor guitars have got out of this, they’ll probably get guitars for life anyway.
I think this blog post on the Taylor guitar website is somewhat informative on how to carry guitars on planes!
Read blog post
Seems that the important advice is to know the linear inch dimensions “If, for example, your case measures 20 inches long by 20 inches wide by 10 inches high, it would be 50 linear inches”. They even suggest you carry a tape measure with you!
Never heard of adding 3d measurements before….. !
I think Ryanair has made skeptics of us all with their supposed plans for stand-up flights and so on. My gut feeling is that this is probably genuine. United has to do something in response. Any video they produce would almost certainly be a heap of rubbish. I think they have to get the band to produce a response in some way perhaps through free flights, new guitars. The band will do very well out of this. For United, it will be a small blip. Everyone knows that they – along with other airlines – chuck luggage around.
Yes, replace it and post a written apology on the United website.
Ya it sets a precedent but its unlikely something at this level pops up everyday.
Don’t do a ‘CEO’s video response’ – cause it will probably suck
Definitely don’t do a music video – it will for sure suck.
Reminds me a bit of the Dominos Pizza videos back in April:
http://www.methodshop.com/2009/04/disgusting-dominos.shtml
(see original video and response from CEO)
The CEO’s response got over 700k view + 7K comments, mostly all negative cause the guy is clearly reading off cue cards.
Back to this guitar video:
60 comments on the LA times website:
http://travel.latimes.com/daily-deal-blog/index.php/smashed-guitar-youtu-4850/
3,000+ comments on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo
This band definitely has a hit song on their hands…. so just replace the guitar (thats what they are asking for) Hopefully the other 2 videos this guy has promised to create will be less harmful.
I’m with the cynical hacks on this one… So whenever I have some grievance with a big multi-national I know what I need to do… just fire up the guitar and write me a song (yeehaa).
Just to be contrary… they could ignore it. It will go away… give it a couple of weeks. I don’t think it will make much difference to how many seats they sell… do you? Seriously?
Jeremy you are probably right it won’t make any difference to United sales – it’s really if they want to have a bit of fun back – but that will be time and money – so at the end of the day they will probably just sit back enjoy the song and ignore.. What these guys don’t realise is the amount of money they will have already cost the airline in top level meetings/ PR agency advice blar blar blar…. everyone racing around, getting hot under the collar. Amazing what impact you can have. Now, if this had been Air New Zealand what would the enterprising Rob Fife had done? The only airline CEO I know who has stripped for his company…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnhVcD74i14
This is actually a wonderful opportunity for United to turn the problem into positive PR for the airline. Will that happen though? I’d be very surprised.
Whilst I agree with Nathan about treating the customer as a special case, I don’t think United have much of a choice & have to respond publicly one way or another. Having flown United in the past and had a problem, I found United’s customer service to be truly awful and made a point of flying with AA when I was in the USA last year. It looks as though the lead singer was even more upset because of 9 months of being given the run-around. Keep in mind that the actual ground staff may be from an outside company rather than United themselves.
Surely a great way of thinking about this is what would Southwest do? [Southwest are an airline well known for their good customer service] Here’s a great example of Southwest responding to an issue highlighted in the media to their advantage (yes it’s not the same, but it is comparable and note that they responded the NEXT day) http://dallas.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2007/09/10/daily51.html
1. Apologise to the customer in private. Pay for any damage caused.
2. Apologise to the customer in public (as the customer has made the complaint public), ideally on the company blog. Be honest in the response – particularly about the damage caused
3. Make a concerted effort to educate your own staff what your own policy is. There’s a great sentence on the taylorguitairs.com story that ‘many flight attendants do not know their own airline’s policy regarding carry-on guitars’.
4. Highlight to customers to transport a guitar with an airline (whether it’s United or anyone else). This is where you could be creative e.g. taking photos of the journey the guitar takes between the check-in desk and the aircraft to highlight what hazards
5. If the ground handlers are from an outside company then there’s probably some action you can take with them
The band themselves could help a lot of people by linking to the taylorguitairs.com guidelines. I don’t agree with the idea that you respond in a youtube video until/unless the issue itself has been solved, or that you buy the customer a new guitar – paying for repairs should be a standard practise for any customer that suffers something similar.
@kevinlukemay – I’d be surprised if the band is being paid for this as they risk their reputation if the song is complete fabrication
@simon I love how Pelle Carlberg calls them the airline of s***e!
Edd
Could it be that United is about to launch a ‘guitar guarantee’ for which, I guess, they could try and charge extra. Perhaps they want to attract all travelling musos.
This vid. is, as they say in sales school, ‘establishing a need’.
We’ll see.
Louise
Tour Operator
Twitter id – somakholidays
There’s an update on what actions United have taken so far here: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-biz-united-breaks-guitars-video-ual-july8,0,4414385.story
Mashable have also posted today a generic guide to damage control from social media: http://mashable.com/2009/07/09/social-media-damage-control/
Edd
Well it seems that United Airlines never did reply (by video) to the initial song.
However they did offer compensation to Dave Carroll.
The entire event kicked off a great meme on youtube for United Airlines themed videos. I have grouped 15 of the most interesting (from a commentators perspective) and added some analysis here
http://www.tourcms.com/blog/2009/08/25/top-15-united-airlines-breaks-guitars-youtube-videos/
There are some truly weird ones!