I always think politicians get the scandals they deserve. Typically, the ones that stick are ones that confirm some flaw that everyone expected. For Clinton, it was being slippery. For Bush, it was being clueless. The same seems true for brands. Now that consumers are super-empowered to fight back using social media channels, they can confirm something that's already out there. The Comcast technician falling asleep on the couch fit with many people's experience with the cable company. Jeff Jarvis' Dell Hell dovetailed nicely with a years long decline in service and quality. Even Domino's fiasco, I think, points to lingering suspicions over the quality of fast food places.
The flipside of all these tools and channels allowing for the cheap, easy spread of brand messages is they can just as easily be used against brands. Now it's United's turn to get thrown into the stream. What strikes me when flying legacy airlines is how tired and drab everything, even the people working there. You often don't really feel like a customer handing over hundreds of dollars but at the mercy of an enormous bureaucracy. That's what Dave Carroll has captured with his music video detailing how the airline broke his guitar and then refused to make amends. Since it was posted yesterday, Carroll's video has gone over 120,000 views and attracted 1,000 comments from people echoing his experience. Excuse the pun, but he struck a chord. It's easy to feel some amount of sympathy for brand blindsided by things like this, but they're pretty much reaping what they've sown over many years of failing to live up to their brand promises.
Nice insights.
For anything to go viral, the message needs an ecosystem *staged* to receive it. The United guitar thing struck a latent antipathy toward airlines (don't get me STARTED about their call center after business hours). It reminds me of how Iran became a fad du jour on the tails of a recent U.S. election; it was so easy to project our passions about fairness onto a foreign land, while we ignore so many international tragedies elsewhere. Human networks are like a big Petri dish, ready to spread certain types of bacteria wildly if it fits with our existing culture.
The hard reality is some companies don't have an economic incentive to improve service or listen to social media. Airlines push most passengers through once a year. Who cares about loyalty when they may or may not come back? Or when they shop for the lowest rates on Travelocity when they do? In United's case, most passengers are just throughput -- one-off transactions, commodities, to be swiped away at the lowest possible cost. That's no knock on them. Fuel prices are up. Travel demand down. The main summer season is fading, and they'll be underwater soon. The bad PR will fade, and the economics will return.
Too bad. I wouldn't pack guitars anytime soon.
Posted by: Ben Kunz | July 08, 2009 at 18:50