The Impact of a Guitar
Posted by Jaci Russo
By now, you have probably heard about United Airlines smashing Dave Carroll’s guitar. And then, when United did nothing to rectify the situation, Dave wrote a song and released a video on YouTube chronicling his woes.
With close to 4 million hits and hundreds of blogs and articles relaying the details of this situation, the story has been studied from all angles.
I wondered about the impact.
Does it really matter to a huge global corporation that a Canadian singer songwriter was mad at them and made a music video about it?
Well, when you read the following article by Chris Ayers, you realize just how impactful one man and his guitar can be.
Revenge is Best Served Cold - On YouTube
by Chris Ayres
“Meanwhile, within four days of the song going online, the gathering thunderclouds of bad PR caused United Airlines’ stock price to suffer a mid-flight stall, and it plunged by 10 per cent, costing shareholders $180 million. Which, incidentally, would have bought Carroll more than 51,000 replacement guitars.”
We write a lot about the power of a brand and the need to monitor your reputation online. United has 180,000,000 reasons to change how they respond to these situations and develop a better plan for next time.
What do you think? How could United have responded better?
PS - If you read all the way to the bottom of Chris’ article, you will find an interesting tidbit about a local Lafayette, LA story…on the website of a UK newspaper. The Internet unites us all.
