Doing the Right Thing

In chapter one of Real-Time Marketing & PR written by David Meerman Scott we took a look at the United Airlines incident involving David Carroll and his Taylor guitar. David Carroll was able to take his devastating incident of his guitar being broken while traveling. In the end this incident would cost him $1,500 for his guitar to be fixed, but it would also turn into a major Public Relations benefit for himself, Taylor Guitars and Calton Cases, Inc. Now whenever anyone thinks about flying United Airlines with precious cargo, they immediately think of Dave Carroll's song, and they immediately choose a different airline.

Dave Carroll spent nine months arguing with a large amount of United Airlines employees, and all he was trying to do was receive compensation for his guitar that they had broke. After a long nine months of being sent in a variety of dead ends, Dave Carroll finally decided that he was just going to write a song about the whole incident, seeing how he was a musician after all.

The success of this video was unbelievable. Throughout my reading of this chapter, I really liked how they showed a variety of charts and graphs about how much attention the video got in such a short amount of time. In the end Dave Carroll came out with three new songs on Itunes, Taylor Guitars showed the proper packing procedure for guitars when flying and Calton Cases, Inc. made a special case designed specifically for musicians who are traveling.

This particular example gave a variety of this you should and shouldn't do in public relations. The main issue is that United Airlines never acknowledged Dave Carroll and his report and they really didn't think that he could do anything about it. Once the first video came out, United Airlines should have made a public statement about the situation, and even given a public apology, except they decided that it was in their best interest to dodge reporters and act as if they had done nothing wrong. United Airlines should have originally given Dave his compensation and an apology and they would have avoided this whole fiasco, but instead they went with ignoring the pres and not taking responsibility. On the other hand, companies like Taylor Guitars and Calton Cases, Inc. turned United Airlines disaster into big positives. Taylor Guitars profit increased significantly after the video was posted on YouTube, as did Calton Cases, Inc.

As a future public relations professional, one of the main things that I have learned from this chapter is to confront all problems when they occur, so that they don't become an even bigger issue. I also learned that you need to take opportunity when it is handed to you because you never want to miss a perfect opportunity for your company to become recognized.