In class on Tuesday, we talked about the Youtube video, “United Breaks Guitars.”Even as my professor was merely giving us background information on the story, I was downloading the video to watch on my laptop. In 2008, Dave Carroll, a Canadian musician, was sitting on a plane at Chicago’s O’Hare when some people started yelling that the baggage men were throwing guitars. Carroll’s $3500 Taylor guitar was severely damaged, and he called on United to fix it. United repeatedly refused to pay the $1200 he asked for in compensation. After a year of being redirected all over the place, Carroll decided to write a song about his story. In just ten days, this video had over 3 million hits, according to a blog post by Visible Measures, an internet video measurement company.
Chris Ayres claims this video cost United $180 million. Whether or not this is true, United did contact Carroll and tell him they would pay for his guitar, but he turned them down. He has now released a second song, and is said to be releasing a third as well.
I think that United’s PR didn’t do a very good job with this situation. This video reached out to a lot of people that could empathize with their frustrations with the company as well, and merely offering to pay for Carroll’s damages is NOT enough to make the millions of people watching the video feel better about the company.
One of the most important things to keep a company in the public's good graces is their customer service. Customer service is that determining factor that tips the scale to a positive impression or a negative impression on the organization when a customer has a problem. From this scenario, unfortunately, we see that United's customer service seems to have much area to improve upon. After reading many of the comments under the original Youtube video, I discovered that many people also were unhappy with the way they were treated when dealing with United. I think that one reason this video was so popular was just because there are a ton of people who have to deal with problems every time they go to the airport, often with no relief, and this video was a tasteful, humorous way for them to feel that their emotions were being told to someone. People could easily relate with the story. I'm sure that is because many had been in a similar situation of being pointed from person to person, redirected from department to department, until they end at a wall of "NO." That is, if they were persistent enough to even find a wall. I'm sure other people liked the clip because it was entertaining! Knowing nothing about the situation, I still laughed at the somewhat melodramatic parts of it--that was half the fun!
I think that this reaction was an awesome way for Dave to get his message across. It was effective. It expressed his side of the story. It was catchy. It spread like wildfire. And most importantly: it got the attention of the people he was trying to reach.
Excellent PR work, Dave Carroll. Maybe United should think about hiring you as their new PR guy.
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Here are some articles also discussing this story that I found informative!
I like how you posted some articles using the information that you found. I think that it is good to give your readers a source to back up what you are saying. You also brought in a personal experience of how you became interested which in turn made me more interested in you post. It showed how it related to you and not just a post about what had happened.
ReplyDeleteI like your post... I agree with you on that everyone could relate with Carroll because at some point or another everyone has been through the hassle of dealing with major corporations customer service and realizing its just a big mess. I think social media is a great thing now because it gives the customer power to exploit company's customer service which will force to companies to step up the customer service instead of hideing from cases that they are to be blamed for.
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