One Music Video and Millions of Hits Later

The control social media gives the common consumer is amazing. The fact that a person can reach so many others with whatever information he deems important is extremely dangerous to the public relations of companies and their products.

One example of this is the music video by Dave Carroll, titled “United Breaks Guitars,” found on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

His video tells the story of how United Airlines had broken his guitar, and had eventually refused to take responsibility. The video was connected to the full story on his own website as well as a Twitter information page for the video.

http://www.davecarrollmusic.com/story/united-breaks-guitars

http://twitter.com/DaveCarroll

The multi faceted strategy of attack that Carroll uses through the video and story of his song is very effective. YouTube by itself is a very effective information sharing tool, as well as facebook, Blogger, and Twitter. What Dave Carroll did right is use them all. He connected his YoutTube music video to his Twitter page, which was also linked to his own website with the full story; he connected three different medians with different audiences to share the same information. I suppose one could equate it to placing advertisements on a billboard, in a newspaper, and in a magazine, except that the internet is more effective because all the advertisements are connected by a click of a button.

Additionally, Carroll seems like a normal guy, which is another reason for his successful videos. It is easy for a consumer to relate to him and his videos because Carroll is himself a consumer. A very effective advertising scheme is to use testimonials of a third party to sell a product. A consumer can have the reassurance they want from a seemingly unconnected third party through a testimonial. Unfortunately for United, the testimonial given by Carroll was not positive.

Of course, Carroll also had a product to promote for himself: his music. The interest he garnered from using a topic many could relate to consequently helped people discover his music. Currently, Carroll’s video has had almost 7.5 million views. This is incredible publicity for any musician. But, even more incredible is that aside from what was paid for the domain of Carroll’s website, he used free advertising. He posted the information on YouTube and Twitter, which are both of no cost to him, and provided in return amazing amounts of publicity. Carroll has been asked to appear on countless television programs showcasing the phenomenon he caused, pushing his image even further.

But, where is the response from Untied? Wouldn’t it be wise for United to make this dialogue they have with Carroll public? Carroll will publicize the dialogue anyways, so why not address the millions of interested potential consumers as well as Carroll? Instead United attempts to buy off Carroll, who then suggests publicly that United take the money they offered him and give it to a charity. United was not interested in Carroll’s business in the first place, but they still insisted on attempting to buy him off and sweep the mess under the rug. The millions of dollars that United lost weren’t from the pocket of Carroll, but from the millions of potential customers that didn’t fly United. So why isn’t United trying to reach them?

United could have possibly salvaged some of its loss by responding to Carroll’s video publicly. A public statement would reconnect the company with its customer base and regain the customer’s lost confidence. Some newscasts, however, said that United stated that it was learning from the incident, but this is not public enough of a statement. A farther reaching broadcast statement would be needed to reach the estranged potential United customers that would not be buying United tickets.

The sincerity of a company means a lot to a consumer. A company should try to get its customers to trust them. If a customer feels that a company is untrustworthy, they would most likely stop dealing with it. United’s failure to communicate effectively to its customers causes less consumers to trust it. This is what happened to United; their customers stopped trusting the company because of Carroll’s effective negative third party testimonial.