What To Do About the “United Breaks Guitars” Video

I just watched the brand new “United Breaks Guitars” video thanks to a tweet from @cassi_hl. The song and video are funny and well done, but it got me thinking about bad publicity on the Internet and what to do about it. The video is about four minutes long, but I thought it was worth it. Heck, it will probably take less time to watch then reading my typically long winded blog posts. Enjoy:

The United Airlines baggage guys threw the guitars around, broke one of their acoustic guitars, and after a year long battle . . . United refused to do anything about it.

Welcome to the year 2009, where the customer service stakes are much higher. If you don’t provide good customer service, you can end up all over the Internet. Companies pay Internet Marketing guys like me to bury the ripoff.com reports that appear on the first page of Google when searching for their company name. It is that serious.

Starting today, I think United Airlines will realize how serious it is and someone is going to get yelled at. Maybe multiple people. The “United Breaks Guitars” video was uploaded just yesterday, but already has 3,500 views. It should become pretty popular . . . so what should United do?

Do nothing and it will probably get worse. The views of the video will increase, comments with similar stories will appear on Youtube, and people like me will write blog posts about the video to help spread the bad press like a plague.

Hey United, how about creating a music video of your own starring Garth Brooks? (Who is still fresh in viewers minds from the TV show Celebrity Apprentice.) Get some comedy writers, Garth’s guitar, and make a hilarious video. Apologize to the band for breaking the guitar and blame it on the baggage guy who just lost his wife, wrecked his truck and accidentally shot his own dog. The song needs to be apologetic, and put United in a customer friendly light, but it mostly just needs to be funny. The President of United Airlines could appear at the end presenting a brand new Taylor guitar to the band. The burly baggage guy could be crying because he feels so bad about the broken guitar, the flight attendants could be washing the bands’ cars because they didn’t care about the guitar, and Garth could finish the song jamming with the band for a glorious ending. The music stops, and then they all start laughing for no reason – just like the end of every Scooby Doo episode.

OK, I got a little carried away at the end, but you get the point. Fight back with a funny “we really do care about our customers” video and who knows, it may get more hits than the original negative video. It can’t hurt, especially if “United Breaks Guitars” becomes viral.

If United Airlines decides to play it safe by not saying anything, enter the second company who could really benefit from this video. The Taylor Guitar Company could shoot a video of them giving brand new guitars to all of the band members. Maybe even a funny music video featuring some of their famous endorsers. Press releases, online marketing, print ads in Guitar World promoting the video, the whole works. It would portray Taylor as a company that really cares about their customers, has a cool sense of humor, and it would take advantage of the press the video may receive.

I’m waiting for one of these ideas to appear online, and then I’ll send my invoice. Go viral video, go!