Update: United Breaks Guitars
Sunday, July 12th, 2009When I blogged about this two days after it was posted on Youtube:
two days has just under 15,000 views, just over 4,000 ratings (with an average of 5 stars), over 1,000 comments
Today, six days after it was posted on Youtube:
- just over 2.3 million views
- 19,358 ratings (with an average of 5 stars)
- 12,250 comments
So the initial 15,000 views x 4 minutes of negative engagement is now 2.3million views x 4 minutes of negative engagement.
Since everyone seems to be hung up on using physical world ROI to apply to social media, let’s do this in the reverse situation.
Let’s use the lowest conversion/open rate possible (I’m thinking direct mail with about 1%), I’ll halve that for the internet at 0.5%, which is 115,000 people. If these 115,000 people say “I’m never flying United again”, how much does that translate in negative ROI over each customer’s lifetime at an average of say, one trip a year?
Of course, this isn’t a “scientific” way of calcluating anything. But that’s what we do isn’t it? Buy a million banner ads and hope for a 1% clickthrough rate. This is the same thing, working against you.
Can your company afford that?
Tags: conversion rate, customer lifetime value, direct mail, negative brand coverage, negative brand interaction, open rate, ratings, ROI, united airlines, united breaks guitars, views, youtube
