Dave Carroll vs United Airlines

As you may recall, last summer an obscure Canadian musician became an internet sensation after United Airlines "broke his Taylor guitar." That musician, Dave Carroll, recounted the ordeal on his website:

In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3,500 guitar was severely damaged. They didn't deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say "no" to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world.
(http://www.davecarrollmusic.com/)

This event is a prime example of the importance of public relations in the era of social media. Carroll outlined his attempts to receive reimbursement for the damage to his guitar and also the unacceptable customer service he received from United. Once his attempts to receive reimbursement were ignored, Carroll took his frustrations to YouTube . This proved to be a brilliant decision by Carroll and it earned him international notoriety.

According to an article in Rolling Stone magazine, after hearing about Carroll's unfortunate experience on United, other airlines offered Carroll free flights and a chance to experience their customer service. Also, Bob Taylor, of Taylor Guitars, offered guitars and props for Carroll's second video. Carroll was able to capitalize on the success of the videos and advance his career through nearly unlimited free publicity. This kind of large-scale PR could not have been possible in a pre-social media world.

United's big mistake, aside from damaging Carroll's guitar, was not realizing the impact of social networking sites, like YouTube, in today's society. Allowing Carroll's video to be released was a poor PR choice that ended up costing United a reported $180 million. When United finally responded to Carroll's video, they opted to use traditional media rather than new media.

Continuing with poor PR choices, United did not use the chance to respond to the allegations with solutions and policy changes, but rather, they sought to pay Carroll off and hope that the controversy would go away. United needed to realize that a major component of PR is customer service and that by ignoring Carroll, they were sending potential customers the message that they did not care about customer service.

Although United eventually offered to reimburse Carroll $1,200 for repairs to his guitar and $1,200 in flight vouchers, their gestures were too little too late. In today's fast-pace, socially networked blogosphere, hesitating for an instant allows negative press to generate and spread throughout the world. In PR it is understood that any press is good press, but United did not take the opportunity to take the negative press this situation generated and use it to their advantage. Rather than addressing the issue outright and offer solutions and new policies, they allowed the negative press to fester in the minds and posts of bloggers worldwide and tarnish their reputation.