United Breaks Guitars: And What It’s Costing Them
Thursday, July 9th, 2009It’s all over Twitter but I picked this up via Dan York’s blog: a YouTube video by a band, Sons of Maxwell, singing the song “United Breaks Guitars” which in two days has just under 15,000 views, just over 4,000 ratings (with an average of 5 stars), over 1,000 comments and plenty, plenty, of bad press.
Seriously, wouldn’t it just have been easier (and cheaper) to pay for and replace the guitar? Hell, buy the whole band new guitars and maybe it might have been a positive music video?
I go back to what was said at Ad:Tech (and covered in the GennY Podcast #6), not every initiative in social media has to be about pure, hard ROI in the form of cashflow. As I’ve said before, it’s not always about ROI, but also about what it’s costing you by not being involved in the online space.
Again let’s put that in perspective. 15,000 views at about 4 minutes each (the duration of the music video) = how much time spent on negative brand association? Buying up the equivalent amount of 30 second spots won’t save you. And nothing United Airlines does will prevent this video from being viewed again and again for many years to come either.
I bet many companies fear this happening to them.
Stop.
Mistakes are going to happen. It’s about solving them the first time and solving them right. Not about ignoring them and letting them blow up in your face.
Tags: ad:tech, cashflow, dan york, Gen Y, genny podcast, ROI, social media initiatives, sons of maxwell, twitter, united breaks guitars, youtube
