Just when the dust from United Breaks Guitars was starting to settle, the second of Dave Carroll’s three videos came out this morning. This song, which takes a closer look at his dealings with United employee Ms Irlweg, has 3,305 views already after just a few hours. The first video, which came out five weeks ago, is nudging 5 million views by now.
This is a fantastic example of the power of social media and why all travel companies need to pay attention to this space. Most are not doing a particularly effective job – as the results of Darren Cronian from Travel Rants going “mystery shopping” on Twitter show.
When I first wrote about Dave Carroll’s United Breaks Guitars protest video, it was nudging close to 140,000 views on YouTube. Carroll said he was aiming for one million by the end of the year, though I don’t know whether that was for the first video or spread across the promised three.
I knew from the social media buzz the video was generating that this number would quickly climb but I think it’s fair to say that United Breaks Guitars has well and truly exceeded expectations. The YouTube video is now at 4,973,195 at the time of publishing. In July the Sons of Maxwell video channel was the number-one most viewed for all of Canada, across all categories. It is currently the forty-third most-subscribed of all time in the Canadian musicians channel and apparently all the publicity has done wonders for the band’s iTunes sales too.
United Airlines belatedly offered compensation for the broken guitar – too late for Carroll who posted a video response to the offer.
More bad news for United – the popularity of Carroll’s video also boosted views for related video, such as the Fox News story about Carroll and his April 2008 rant “United Airlines Sucks” from YouTube user NutCheese.
My experience in journalism tells me that bad news is like a snowball effect – one telling of the story feeds off another so the story gets bigger. In social media that effect is amplified because it’s no longer just about the newsmaker’s gut feeling – members of the public can contribute to how big the story gets. The plethora of statistics coming out of social media, such as page views on YouTube, give something solid and meaty for the journalist to peg their stories on. (For analysis on this effect from a PR point of view, see here).
I suspect we may have already seen the peak – I don’t expect song 2 to be as big as the original. But the indications are it’s going to get plenty of people watching it and since there’s a third one in the works as well, the pain for United is not over quite yet.
What does United think of all of this? Check out Christopher Elliott’s recent interview with Barbara Higgins, United’s vice president of customer contact centres, for National Geographic Traveler’s Intelligent Travel Blog.
A couple of things come to mind. First, this highlights the need for businesses to actively monitor what’s being said about them in social media. Perhaps this wouldn’t have snowballed so much if United had intervened earlier. Or- even if it had–maybe they could have come up with a clever response.
Second, I wonder if this will have any tangible effect on United. Airlines these days are a commodity. Most people just pick the cheapest flights that Orbitz shows them. Would I be willing to pay $50 less with United compared with some other airline even though I know that chances are they might break my guitar? You betcha!
Thanks for the comment. I agree that businesses need to monitor what’s being said about them, however United Airlines did become involved as soon the song started getting traction on the web. By then it was too late. What they need to do is start treating their customers better to begin with, because social media gives customers far more power than they used to have. I think United recognises this and that’s why they are using Carroll’s first song as part of their training. As for tangible effects, I don’t know. It’s a tough time in the airline business anyway. I think the damage to their reputation is longer term rather than something that would impact sales right now. I don’t always choose my flights purely on price. Sometimes I need to make sure I can make connections, so reliability becomes very important. And for long-haul flights, comfort and the quality of food and entertainment becomes very important to me. – Caitlin.