A seemingly soft-spoken country singer from Canada caused a viral throw-down, turning a prominent airline into a public laughingstock due to a single satirical YouTube video posted online. United Airlines broke singer Dave Carroll's $3,500 Taylor guitar while throwing it carelessly in the plane and refused to claim responsibility for their actions. Instead of complaining and suing, Carroll reverted to viral revenge. He planned to release three songs about his experience with his band Sons of Maxwell to destroy United and get his revenge by turning the public against them. He used the mass media to chokehold United, millions rallying behind him and the hilarity of his songs. Nine months later, the singer posted his songs on YouTube, which received comments such as, "United jerks. I'm not flying there until Dave gets 2 brand new guitars to compensate the headache." By the second day, his first video had 5.2 million views, turning casual employee indifference into a corporate public relations meltdown.

The catchy song and video poke fun at the clumsy baggage handlers and the reaction of United. Some catchy lyrics from those YouTube videos are, "We could be best buddies but our friendship has been muddied by a flawed United Airlines policy...if you'd just come to your senses, accept the consequences we could be best buddies." This indicated Carroll would have forgiven the company if they just replaced his guitar which would have excluded the hassle and the 5.2 million people now doubting United Airlines. The interesting thing is, Carroll wasn't exactly popular before, but now his name is well known due to this airline blunder. More people then imagined now have access to his music, and it's essentially free publicity! Carroll was absolutely brilliant in what he did to explicitly expose his negative view of the airline, while at the same time getting his name out to a public previously unknown to him. This illustrates the power of social media both to promote a person or organization, as well as absolutely destroy it. Dave Carroll's actual words from his experience are, "I should thank United. They’ve given me a creative outlet that has brought people together from around the world. If my guitar had to be smashed due to extreme negligence I’m glad it was you that did it."

Social media empowers the individual exclusively and has the unique and frightening opportunity to trash big companies with the click of a single mouse. “If you spend millions on advertising your brand and someone spend five cents on a Youtube video, you’ve just wasted a lot of advertising dollars. Now we have this giant megaphone called Web 2.0 saying how horrible your company is,” says Dr. Natalie Petouhoff. Just posting that YouTube video hurt their company image atrociously. It must look horrible for a company when the third link on a Google search of "united airlines" after Unitedairlines.com and the airline check-in is the YouTube video making fun of their company. When the innocent traveler is looking up information on United, they see the enticing video on the third link down, and it's all downhill from there. As we see, social media sites are more than just areas for networking. They can be tools used by PR, by the public, and by organizations to share any ideas, be they positive or negative.

Here is what really gets me. I researched on the United Airlines website under the "Missing or Delayed Baggage" link. It states, "damages should be reported to and resolved by the individual United Baggage Services Office at the airport location where the damage was discovered." Carroll did that! He complained multiple times but got answers like, “but hun, that’s why we make you sign the waiver”, and an absolute denial of his claim for compensation because he didn’t complain at the right place or right time. The airline wouldn’t even grant his request when he gave up asking for the guitar and asked for $1,200 in travel vouchers instead.

The amount of communication between the customer service department, PR department, policy department, and other departments Carroll talked to was apparently nonexistent. This error above all else is what made this simple fix into a complete catastrophe. Communication is key, especially dealing with customers. If there had just been a simple communication from the customer service area to the public relations department, there is a high probability no negative press about United would have ever occurred.

The only thing United actually did right in turning this to their advantage was not ignoring the video, but claiming it as part of their new employee training. In July 2009, United asked permission to use Carroll's music video staff training to "help the company improve its internal "corporate culture" relating to its customer relations in that area of its services." However, laughing it off or playing it down isn't going to reduce the threat posed by this country singer. I doubt anything positive will come of this for United. The only thing to do now is wait for the humiliating spotlight to slowly fade.