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United Breaks Guitars - A Marketing Case Study In The Making

To my surprise, I've found quite a few people who have missed what I think will become one of the classic case-studies in customer management and PR in the web age. It stretches back over a year and involves a talented Canadian folk musician, Dave Carroll, and the story of his trip with his band to perform in Nebraska.
The band was forced to check in their guitars as luggage, and used strong hard-sided cases for the purpose. While in transit at Chicago flying on United Airlines, passengers saw United baggage handlers tossing the guitars across the tarmac with abandon. The United crew on the plane did nothing to help him and it was in Nebraska that he was finally able to check his $3,500 guitar, only to find the neck broken. Dave tried for over a year to get some explanation and compensation from United, but got a final "no" at the start of 2009. His parting message to the United representative was that he intended to write three folk songs about the experience.
Good to his word, Dave and the band created a folk masterpiece - a wryly humourous song with a catchy, pacy guitar tune and a great hook - and recorded it to their usual production quality. They also engaged a video producer and produced a funny and watchable music video. The whole package appeared on YouTube last week and is reaching record viewing figures already. It's so good I went looking for a way to buy and download it - Dave is now selling the MP3, hopefully briskly.
Before long, this phenomenal take-up caught news attention and the video appeared on the US news channels, including CNN and Fox. In each case the reporters sided with the underdog and applauded the song. The manufacturer of Dave's guitar also jumped in, posting a nice video discussing how to get your guitar mended and suggesting United didn't know the rules when they forced the guitars in the hold.
After all this attention, United finally decided they might have a problem. They called Dave and offered him compensation. He responded by saying he wasn't interested in that any more - United had the chance to say that all last year and didn't. He told them that if they wanted to pay money, to give it to charity. United picked a music charity and optimistically posted on Twitter that the matter was now sorted - nothing to see folks, move along.
If only. Dave has posted a short video on YouTube where he says that song two is even better than song one and should be ready in August. I've not seen anywhere that United has responded on YouTube yet, and I suspect their unhappiness will only get deeper until they embrace the situation rather than trying to "solve" it. This one could run and run, and when it's done I think every corporate marketing team will use it as a case study.

Update August 18th:This one will run & run - part 2 is now live:

Looking forward to part 3!
Labels: Music

posted at 2:26 PM (UK) | |

Comments:

This story is ``deja vu all over again''. About twenty years ago, a singer named Tom Paxton wrote a song after a similar situation in which his guitar was broken on Republic Airlines. Search for ``Tom Paxton Thank You Republic Airlines'' to find the lyrics.

# posted by

Anonymous : 2:03 PM

In 1972, Canadian supergroup Lighthouse recorded "Broken Guitar Blues".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6PRqU0sU8I

# posted by

Garry : 5:06 PM

Reminiscent of Eddie Cantor and Goldman Scahs. See: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,753931-2,00.html

# posted by

JonnyBoats : 6:49 PM

I had to check my Gibson when I brought it back from the US in 2007.

I was not hapy about it, but if you have a very rugged case and make sure you loosen all the strings so there is no tension on the neck, you have a good chance of it still being on one piece (although clearly the case had suffered quite a lot of rough treatment). There are such things as flght cases though...

# posted by

patrickf : 2:09 PM

There was an article on HuffPo that said United lost $180 million when it's stock dropped 4 days after the video went viral. The writer doubted the drop was due to United Breaks Guitars, but I don't.

I have been playing for 47 years now, and have lost an instrument to the airlines. Horror stories abound among pros and amateurs alike about broken guitars and always have through all the years I have been playing.

American made guitars like Taylors are still the world's standard, and over the past 20 years, new guitar sales have steadily gone up as the baby boomers started buying the guitars they always wanted as kids. The average price of a professional quality American made guitar is around $2500 up now, depending on the model. It is very common to see amateurs playing instruments 2-3 times that amount.

The guitar is also the most popular instrument in the world. Every single player thinks of his instrument as being special, and often a guitar is the most prized possession owned.

The net forums on guitars are always full of questions on airline travel, and all the questions are full of fear, because so many expensive guitars are broken.

If anything, United Breaks Guitars cost United much more than $180 million. Look around the next time you fly... about 1/4 of the passengers own a guitar.

# posted by

Anonymous : 11:47 PM