United Airlines Responds to Dave Carroll
July 12, 2009 by Ed Reese · Leave a Comment
Yesterday I wrote a post re-capping Jason Murphy’s great SEOmoz post that offered ideas to United Airlines regarding how to respond to the Internet smash United Breaks Guitars from Dave Carroll. As it illustrated, United actually has a phenomenal opportunity to show a captive audience of how they can “make things right.”
United’s response: Donate $3,000 to a nonprofit on Dave’s behalf.
My response: Really? Three grand? That’s it?
Really? Three grand. You REALLY need to be featured on SNL’s Really ?!? with Seth & Amy. You have an audience of millions awaiting your response and this is the best you can do? “Wow.” Talk about underwhelming.
You see, if this were a private issue I would call it an appropriate response. You broke a $3,500 Taylor guitar, cost Dave Carroll $1,200 in repairs plus countless hours chasing down a response. $3,000 would be absolutely appropriate if nobody else knew about it. But they do. You blew an incredible opportunity to save face here.
In fact, in just one day United Breaks Guitars jumped from the 4th to 3rd on page one of Google and added two new references to the story. It was also viewed on YouTube over 300,000 times yesterday alone. Check out the rest of a page one search for United Airlines. Half of page one is of the story. Here’s a look at a few:
So who are the winners and losers in all this?
Dave Carroll & The Sons of Maxwell
It’s nearly impossible to put a value on this degree of exposure for a band other than to say this is a life-changing event that will impact their lives for the better. I wonder how many other people like me just bought their album. Dave Carroll is my new personal hero. Look for them to gain a huge crossover following.
Taylor Guitars - Taylor is so brilliant. They didn’t even have anything to do with all this mess. But they’re savvy enough to know a great marketing opportunity when they see one. They set up Dave Carroll and company with sweet Taylor gear and are going to get some great mileage out of this. Talk about a low cost relative to the amount of positive exposure this will generate. Nice work, Taylor. (As a proud owner of a Taylor guitar, I can tell you their guitars are awesome.)
United Airlines - Sorry guys. You blew it. Sure, you gave a few bucks to charity and got a positive response from Dave about it. But this is a very public black eye that $3,000 won’t fix anytime soon.
SEOmoz and Jason Murphy - SEOmoz for recognizing how great Jason’s post was and promoting it to the main page and Jason for adding a new perspective regarding reputation management strategies. Thanks!
New Reputation Management Strategies
July 11, 2009 by Ed Reese · Leave a Comment
I’m finishing up a reputation management project and thought this would be a good opportunity to explain online reputation management in simple terms, include an entertaining example, and direct you to more resources.
In the simplest of terms, online reputation management is the process of creating new web pages that rank higher than the pages containing the bad stuff for your name, product name(s), and/or important keywords. Create enough high ranking & relevant content from enough sources and in time your reputation is clean. Ideally, it’s pushed down to page 3, 4, and lower, but page one is the first big goal.
I hadn’t given much thought to embracing poor reviews until I read this SEOmoz post about reputation management. It was written by Las Vegas Reputation Management & Social Media Consultant Jason Murphy. He gives United Airlines some brilliant ways to respond to the wild popularity (and incredibly awesome) United Breaks Guitars YouTube video from David Carroll. If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s the video. Oh yeah, it’s also the 4th listing on page one of Google for “United Airlines.” Tell me this didn’t get their attention.
Well, according to the LA Times, it looks as though they are contacting Dave Carroll to “make things right.” I’m curious to see if they’ll take any of the steps outlined by Jason in his post. Rather than re-cap his ideas, check out the complete post to see some very creative ways to handle a big reputation management challenge.
In addition to Jason’s post, I recommend reading related posts from SEOmoz, Distilled, Matt McGee, and Bruce Clay.
Britney Paul: Our New Project Manager
July 6, 2009 by Ed Reese · Leave a Comment
I’m proud to announce Sixth Man Marketing’s first employee, Britney Paul. Her primary focus will be client services and project management. However, we are dedicating two hours a day to education and exposure to the search industry. She is also responsible for a weekly blog post and engagement with the business community here in Spokane as well as the search industry at large. Please help me in welcoming Britney to the team. I’m lucky to have her on board.
Britney’s Introduction/First Blog Post:
I am the new Project Manager at Sixth Man Marketing and this my first real job in the professional world. That’s right, I am officially the newbee in town. I am also brand new to the SEO industry, so I’m not quite sure what I’m getting myself into.
Part of my responsibilities is to attend various networking events around Spokane to meet and engage with the people in our community. Ed threw me right into the ring with a beer in my hand. It’s my first week on the job and I’m attending two events.
My first event this week was LaunchPad’s Quarterly Networking Event. I met a few people who were really welcoming to the new girl in town. As a result of the event, I am a LaunchPad member with four friends and counting. It’s a great networking web site for Spokane that’s growing quickly and doing productive things for our community. I’m looking forward to their future events to meet more people.
My second event was a celebration. Seven2 celebrated their 5th Anniversary. The festivities included a margarita fountain, Mexican food, and even karaoke. Although I didn’t make it up on stage to exercise my “unique” vocals and dance skills, I had a really good time and met some more great people that I hope to stay in contact with. These Seven2 guys work really hard at what they do and I congratulate them for five years of success.
I survived Week 1 and I’m interested to see what adventures Week 2 will bring.