Dave Carroll Breaks United

When Dave Carroll’s 2009 YouTube post, “United Breaks Guitars,” first appeared it would have been hard to image the changes it would bring to all big businesses and the shift it would bring to the ever changing handling of public relations. This “customer complaint” has over 9 million views or almost as much as an entire world-viewership of the last super bowl. United Airlines showed many mistakes in their handlings that could have prevented this very negative image that cost their stockholders upwards of $180 million dollars in value (-10%) but the more long term effects of this (United’s stock is back up to only -2%) is the effect social media (including YouTube) has on the field of Public Relations and how it effects how businesses are ran in today’s world where everyone has a “voice.” Or as JD Lasica, writer for socialmediabiz.com put it, “The incident has gone down as perhaps the ultimate self-inflicted customer relations screw-up by a major corporation in the social media era of empowered customers.”

Unfortunately that is not what my Case Study is about. Today I will be writing about what the two parties did right and wrong in this specific scenario and offer hindsight advice, and my reasons supporting my points.

When it comes to Dave Carroll it is hard to find things that he did wrong. He is the one with the viral video that not only did more than accomplished his goal but also fast forwarded his career by hitting #1 on iTunes the week it (United Breaks Guitars) was released and putting him in great demand as a public speaker. He also was very patient in the fact that he waited almost 9 months of “hearing all their excuses and chasing their wild gooses” as his lyrics say. He also supposedly gave them fair warning that he was going to release it. And as they say, the rest is history. A couple things I especially like where how he did not except United’s late attempt to fix his guitar and how he never did comment on the giant effect this may have had on the stocks following the release of his song, by making any sort of the wrong comment he could have turned from social media hero, to life ruining extortionist.

United Airlines on the other side could have defiantly done a lot of things to prevent this from happening. They did try to make things better by donating some money to a local jazz school, and also tried to compensate after the second video was released but the damage was obviously already done. One of the biggest factors was how this Ms. Irlweg would not break company policy and instead just pushed off Mr. Carroll’s claim, and how he claimed he asked an additional three employees while the throwing of luggage was happening. How this could have been handled best would have first started with the three attendants who should have put out a call to the luggage crew to stop that immediately and then report the incident to their supervisor. What this Ms. Irlweg could have done is still not break company policy by buying him a new guitar, but compensating someway else like free first class tickets, or something else they can do. Also it would have in the best interest for United to fire those crew members involved who showed a horrible lack in customer service to prevent future incidents. One of the spokespeople also made a pretty dumb move in my opinion by calling the video, “Excellent.” It is better just to admit the mistake and say what you are doing to prevent future mishaps like this.  I think if any one of these precautions would have happened this whole PR nightmare could have prevented.

Also the best part of this whole story is that on one of Mr. Carroll’s speeches about customer service he flew United and they lost his bags! Unbelievable.