Power of Social Media

Dave Carroll, the lead singer of the up-and-coming band called, Sons of Maxwell, booked a flight from Canada to Nebraska by way of Chicago through United Airlines. Carroll and his band landed in Chicago waiting for their connecting flight, where one of the members of Sons of Maxwell witnessed his bass guitar being tossed around, and Carroll’s 3,500 dollar Taylor guitar was tossed before that.

According to Carroll he politely asked the flight attendant, why his guitar being tossed around? The attendant had no answer for Carroll, and rudely cut him off and told him to talk to the lead agent outside. After finding the lead agent outside she refused to talk to him, and disappeared into the crowd. Carroll finally ran into a worker at the gate that was willing to help him. Carroll explained to the worker that the baggage handlers were throwing around expensive gear. The response that the gate worker gave him was not was he was looking for, she said, “But hun, that’s why we make you sign the waiver”, Carroll responded by saying he didn’t sign a waiver, and no matter what, nobody deserves to have their things treated like that. She then told him to talk to the ground crew; once again Carroll was getting the run-around.

After Carroll arrived at his destination, he opened his guitar case and realized that his guitar was broken. After a series of calls to United, he was told that he would not be compensated for his loss.

Nine months later he finally realized that he was fighting a battle he couldn’t win. So he told one of the United representatives that he was part of a band, and he would be posting a series of music videos on YouTube about his experiences with United.

I believe Carroll posted the United Break Guitars videos because he wanted to let the world know how United treats their customers. Carroll was smart enough to realize the power of social media.

You can say that Carroll believed that his videos would get a lot of hits on YouTube; but there is not a model around that shows how successful posting his videos would be.

As of today there have been over 7 million views of United Breaks Guitars. Costing United millions of dollars, and even worse damaging United’s brand. Carroll has repeatedly thanked United for not compensating his loss, because he has made way more money on United Breaks Guitars, than United would have paid him for his guitar.

When United decide not to follow the “Golden Rule” in PR, which is treat people how you want to be treated; they damaged their credibility. As soon as Carroll told United that he was going to post a series of videos; someone in PR should have stepped in, and paid Carroll. Instead the company failed to realize the power of social media, and they now have a PR nightmare.

Social media damaged United’s image and credibility, I’m not sure if any PR organization can help them. I do believe United will recover, and won’t continue to lose millions, but I think it’s too late for them to salvage their image. I know for a fact, after watching United Breaks Guitars, every time I fly United I will be thinking about Dave Carroll’s song.