Beware of the viral nature of media
United Airlines just got a brutal lesson on the viral nature of media.
According to Canadian musician Dave Carroll, United Airlines broke his $3,500 Taylor guitar. For nine months, he unsuccessfully tried to get United to pay for the repair costs.
So, he took his case online to Youtube with a pretty slick music video called ‘United Breaks Guitars‘.
The video has had over 500,000 views since it was first posted Monday and now United is scrambling.
I was first referred to the video via a story in the Ottawa Citizen by Sarah Schmidt and Blair Crawford.
The term viral in the Ottawa Citizen story was in relation to Youtube and the Internet. However, ironically, as have already stated, I first heard about the story from the Ottawa Citizen – a traditional media outlet.
At last count, the story has appeared in over two hundred traditional outlets and thousands of blogs, which now includes this one.
Also, to add another layer of complexity for United, when viewing the video on Youtube, you are given other anti-United videos to chose from, including a pretty funny Madtv skit.
Viral stories can jump medium to medium and organizations need to be more effective when monitoring and analyzing media as a whole and they need to be able to correlate the different media to one another.
In the case of ‘United Breaks Guitars’, all United can do is apologize and show humility, which they are doing. The video is too well done and has momentum.
I would also recommend that they analyze the ongoing situation and aftermath, so they can better understand what happened and try to figure out how they can repair some of the damage.
That said, they seem to be saying the right things to the media and they need to make sure they stay on message and show humility.
Again, to make sure they are being successful with their attrition, they should be constantly monitoring and analyzing all media, new and traditional.
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FYI: This story was featured this morning on the Ottawa radio station CFRA during the Mark Sutcliffe show. It’s also being featured on many other broadcast outlets through out North America.
I agree that the viral nature of this story is interesting to watch but I think we need to be careful about tossing around references to the “damage” done to United.
Todd Defren did a great follow up on the Motrin Mom debacle that raised a similar stink in the social media realm (though, admittedly, with a lot less crossover into traditional channels). In the end, the shitstorm didn’t really seem to have a big effect on the brand’s reputation.
The speed with which videos like the United Breaks Guitars can go viral is impressive, to be sure, but that same speed often seems to ensure nothing stays on the main pages for too long.
I’m hoping someone looks back at this story in six months to see if there was any related drop in United’s business. By then, YouTube and the blogosphere will probably have crucified three or four more companies.
Joe:
Thanks for the comments. It is much appreciated.
However, I believe ‘damage’ is an accurate word in the context of United’s brand.
The title of the song is ‘United Breaks Guitars’ and it is repeated over and over again in the chorus to the point it’s now embedded in my head.
Heck, I’m humming the tune right now.
Also, to United’s credit, they even said that are using this experience for training purposes, so they’re even acknowledging the hit they are taking and the weakness of their position.
That said, we’ll see what we can do on some of the post analysis of this incident and we’ll post the results.
Forgive the pun, but keep watching our tweets and blog postings and stay tuned…
There’s some interesting discussion on Twitter happening. It’s not a trending topic (yet?) but as you’d imagine many are angry at United over the issue:
http://twitter.com/#search?q=united%20airlines
A challenge that United maybe should address is getting its message out through social media channels, in addition to the traditional media.
Also someone on Twitter pointed out that the video appears in the top Google search results for United Airlines:
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=united+airlines&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
One tweet by Stuart MacDonald (former Expedia exec) points out that this will likely not damage their reputation, simply because it’s already bad, and that is what helped the video go viral:
http://twitter.com/stuartma/status/2570946122
Some food for thought.
Looks like Dave’s not going anywhere. He’s not taking United’s peace offering (cash) and has another song planned.
http://consumerist.com/5311943/dave-carroll-says-no-to-guitar-hush-money-from-united?skyline=true&s=i