Real-Time Marketing & PR

This article is an excerpt from David Meerman Scott’s “Real-Time Marketing & PR: How to Instantly Engage Your Market, Connect with Customers, and Create Products that Grow Your Business Now.”

“My God, they’re throwing guitars out there,” said a woman in a window seat as passengers on a United Airlines flight waited to deplane in Chicago on March 31, 2008.

Singer-songwriter Dave Carroll and fellow members of Sons of Maxwell, a Canadian pop-folk band, knew instantly whose guitars. Flying from home in Halifax, Nova Scotia for a one-week tour of Nebraska, their four guitars were in the airplane’s hold. Sure enough, when the bass player looked out the window he witnessed United baggage handlers tossing his bass.

The band did not have to wait to retrieve their luggage in Omaha, their final destination, to start complaining, because they had actually observed this abuse of their equipment. As they made their way out of the plane, they told the flight attendants what they had seen. “Talk to the ground staff,” they were told. But the O’Hare ground staff said, “Talk to the ground staff in Omaha.”

Sure enough, when Dave opened his hard-shell case in Omaha he discovered his $3,500 Taylor guitar had been smashed. And United Airlines staff in Omaha refused to accept his claim.

So Dave spent months phoning and emailing United in pursuit of $1,200 to cover the cost of repairs. At each step, United staff refused to accept responsibility and shuffled him off: from telephone reps in India, to the central baggage office in New York, to the Chicago baggage office.

Finally, after nine futile months, Dave got a flat “no.” No, he was told, he would not receive any form of compensation from United.

“At that moment, it occurred to me I’d been fighting a losing battle all this time,” Dave told me. “I got sucked into their cycle of insanity. I called and emailed and jumped through hoops, just as they told me to do. The system is designed to frustrate customers into giving up their claims, and United is very good at it. However, as a musician, I wasn’t without options. So when I finally got the ‘no,’ I said, ‘I urge you to reconsider, because I’m a singer-songwriter and I’m going to write three songs about United Airlines and post them on YouTube.’ ”

Making good on his promise on July 6, 2009, Dave posted on YouTube “United Breaks Guitars,” a catchy tune with memorable lyrics that tells the saga of his broken guitar:

United, United, you broke my Taylor Guitar

United, United, some big help you are

You broke it, you should fix it

You’re liable, just admit it

I should have flown with someone else

Or gone by car

‘Cause United breaks guitars

Yeah, United breaks guitars

Within just four days, the video reached 1 million views on YouTube. And then another million. And another.

Momentum built from July 8 to 11 as up to 100 bloggers a day alerted their readers to the video. Incidentally … the number of blog posts per day followed a bell-shaped curve — starting slowly (because Dave Carroll wasn’t well known), building to a peak, then trailing off. We come back to this in Chapter 3 when I discuss the importance of what I call the Real-Time Law of Normal Distribution.

This is a story about speed in media relations.

“United Breaks Guitars” soon became a real-time phenomenon that propelled Dave into the spotlight. It continued to grow in the spotlight because Dave was ready and able to speak with the media in real time, conducting dozens of interviews in a few days while the story was hot.

This is a story about real-time market engagement.

The maker of Dave’s instrument, Taylor Guitars, seized the real-time opportunity to build goodwill among customers. Within days of Dave’s initial YouTube post, Bob Taylor, the company’s president, had his own video up on YouTube, advising traveling musicians how to pack equipment and use airline rules to best advantage.

There’s more: This is a story of real-time product creation, too.

Carlton Cases, a specialist maker of highly durable instrument cases for professional musicians, likewise seized the momentum. Within mere days, Carlton had a new product on the market: the Dave Carroll Traveler’s Edition Guitar Case.

Finally, this is about a company that chose not to connect with customers.

As millions of potential customers saw a video that persuasively cast its brand in the worst possible light, negating the value of tens of millions of dollars in media advertising, United Airlines chose to make absolutely no response. This from the largest player in one of the most consumer-facing of industries, an industry that over decades has spent billions on advertising, public relations, and “scientific” customer service methodology.

As a YouTube phenomenon, “United Breaks Guitars” has drawn attention from thousands of media commentators. But two aspects have been overlooked: the reason why Dave’s video gained so much so much momentum, and the way agile players on the periphery were able to surf that momentum.

This article is an excerpt from David Meerman Scott’s “Real-Time Marketing & PR: How to Instantly Engage Your Market, Connect with Customers, and Create Products that Grow Your Business Now.” To read more about the positive and negative effects of “United Breaks Guitars,” download the PDF.

Courtesy – Steve Kayser