Dave Carroll, Canadian singer and songwriter, was involved in what has been called “The ultimate customer complaint payback” last spring. It all started when he and his band, Sons of Maxwell, were on a United Airlines flight from Halifax to Omaha and a fellow passenger noticed two baggage handlers were throwing their guitars while loading them on to the plane.
Later, after retrieving his luggage, Carroll found that the base of his $3,500 Taylor Guitar had been smashed.
For the next nine months Carroll talked to numerous United Airlines employees whom he said, “put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss”. Carroll’s final offer of a settlement was to receive $1,200 in flight vouchers to cover the cost of repairing the guitar. Upon receiving a final no from Ms. Irlweg Carroll told United he would write three songs about his experience with the company and post them on YouTube for the world to see. Little did United know what this would eventually cost them.
Carroll said he was not concerned with the monetary cost but rather the sentimental value of his broken guitar. He felt that United had broken it and now had the responsibility to fix it. Carroll’s goal when posting his first music video, titled United: Song One, was to get one million hits that year.
United: Song One has now had over 7.4 million views in the past seven months, a far larger response than Carroll had expected.
Carroll’s story is a great example of the power of social media. Not only did Carroll post his story and music video to YouTube but he also utilized other major social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. Although YouTube has gained him the most attention of all the sites Carroll’s MySpace has had 150,058 views and Carroll has 6,809 fans on Facebook.
It is estimated that Carroll’s first music video alone cost United $300 million in stock because of the exposure the video received.
The first step to creating good Public Relations and a positive company image is customer satisfaction. Carroll’s story showed the world the way United handles business and has ultimately cost them far more than the $1,200 in flight vouchers would have in the first place.
United now has to deal with a hurt reputation. Some of the resulting public feedback about United and comments on YouTube include things like “I will never fly United again”. The power of social media is only beginning to emerge and is unpredictable. Having the resources available at our fingertips for everyday people to reach millions is new and unique.
At the end of this story Dave Carroll is the winner. He was able to utilize the power of social media in a clever way. While United is still recovering (when researching this it was very hard to find anything about United’s side of the story) Carroll has gone on to create a career out of the exposure he gained. Carroll continues to release CD’s, tour with his band, make appearances on the news, write his third song about United, and even specialize in selling a protective Guitar case on his website.
Watch the video that started it all United Breaks Guitars HERE
Carroll's Website and links to his Twitter, Facebok, YouTube and MySpace
Carroll's song two
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This thing sounds like I read it from a newspaper. You must have really paid attention in those journalism classes. I also thought that the link in the word was a nice touch. Having the website url seems a little tacky now. I'm going to to copy your lead. Nice job.
ReplyDeleteTakes a positive look at Carroll and his band. I am glad that you mentioned how difficult it is to find information on United's side of the story. It was also good that you left a paragraph explaining this story's relationship with PR. Of most of the articles I have read, there are few that mention the connection of this story to PR and social media.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Jesse, way to go on the inverted pyramid style! Your first paragraph was really enticing and made me want to read the whole thing even though I already knew the story. You write very eloquently and I think you included some very important details.
ReplyDeleteUnited is definitely still struggling. Very interesting that they still haven't made a public statement to clarify the matter. United's reputation will continue to be damaged because each customer matters and Carroll's YouTube video is viewed everyday; with each view being a potential United customer.
ReplyDelete