Social Media Lessons from Broken Guitars

A hot item on the viral scene, this video from Dave Carroll has had nearly 600,000 views in 3 days and is being tweeted and blogged about like crazy.

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 $3500 guitar was severely damaged. They didnt 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. United: Song 1 is the first of those songs. United: Song 2 has been written and video production is underway. United: Song 3 is coming. I promise. Follow me at http://twitter.com/DaveCarroll. Video Produced by Curve Productions of Halifax, http://www.curveproductionsinc.com.

The Takeaways:

1. Companies need to offer quality service and customer care.
2. Failing that, they need to monitor (and respond) the social media world because now an individual has the power to make a difference and be heard – to a much larger audience – not just at the supermarket check out or cafe.
3. Content needs to be quality to go viral. Dave Carroll’s beef is not unique – I lost a bag flying recently that has never shown up – but his response is. Sure, he could have just tweeted “United Sucks!” but that would not have picked up the traction his catchy ditty has.
4. Creativity is rewarded. Dave Carroll may never get any compensation from United, but his little band from Nova Scotia is getting plenty of coverage that is worth more than the $3500 guitar. It also helps that his medium for response is what he does. Now a pile of new potential fans are exposed to his work.

Read the full story on Dave’s MySpace or read about how United is listening and reacting.

For more musical complaints about airlines and damaged guitars check out this video.