The customer service angle is the most important, but I think there are four other big lessons here:

Presentation counts.

There are thousands of consumer gripes at this very moment on twitter, facebook, youtube, individual blogs, and every other web thingy you can think of. What made this one stick and go national?

It’s because it’s well done.

The first time I watched the video, I watched the entire 4:36 (and then watched it again) and you probably did too. By comparison, see how long you can make it through another United Airlines consumer complaint video.

Unless they have no life and unlimited time, people will choose to spend their time with engaging online content instead of stuff they have to struggle to digest.

And the important part for online virility: they won’t pass it on unless it’s really good. Think about your other WOM recommendations to friends. “That restaurant is awful. You should go!”

You still need big media to make a big impact

The video got a response from United within a short time of being posted, but it didn’t really take off into the stratosphere until several new and old media like the Consumerist, LA Times, NY Times, CNN, and other “big guys” featured the video. It might have taken off itself, but these Digg/Oprah-type spotlights amplified the user-level passalong effect to make it go viral. It also helped that Sons of Maxwell already had a fanbase that could help spread the message.

You have to have a base to push off of — if you’re going to jump high.

Don’t back down

United has offered Dave compensation for his guitar and he refused, requesting that United give the money to charity (United is donating $3,000 to the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz). And he is going ahead with the other two songs of his promised United trilogy.

In the end, he is going to come out way ahead. Taylor guitars has offered him some new guitars, other airlines are offering seats, and he and his band now have tremendous publicity.

Learn from your mistakes

It seems that United has no choice except to assume the Duck and Cover position for now. They’ve made the donation. The other songs are coming. (I hope one of them explains the sombreros.) At the minimum, the upcoming second one will get publicity. And United has said they are going to learn from the experience…

Rob Bradford, managing director of customer solutions at United, called Carroll Wednesday to apologize for the foul-up and to ask if the carrier could use the video internally to help change its culture.

(My first suggestion: eliminate stupid titles like “managing director of customer solutions”)

I’d love to see a case study or something come out of United on how they handled this. I think they actually have an opportunity to shine here if they don’t mess it up. The best thing they could do? Offer to help Dave to make the third video a happy ending.

UPDATE (7/17/09): I have thought of a fifth point. From my perspective, Dave Carroll seems like a nice, decent genuine guy. Being a good guy counts probably more than anything.

I’ve noticed most agency web sites have a few common characteristics:

• Rule #1: Flash!
• Staff / Management Bios: Wacky, fun, and meaningless. There is a über-creative photo of the person pretending to have fun.
• Site Navigation: Not at the top, bottom, left, or right. In order to click around to the other pages on the site, you’ll need to take a bus to another location.
• Contact Info: Phone numbers, emails, etc hidden on the most illogical page possible.
• Office Pictures: Two ways to go here. 1) If it’s an “agency” of one guy with a Mac in his bedroom, then you’ll see some creative use of stock photography. 2) If it’s a real “agency”, the wackiness continues with pics of the foosball table, the aquarium, and the video game area to show potential clients how their billable hours are being wasted while creativity happens.
• Philosophy: Starts off with “We’re a new type of agency.” and the rest is filled with meaningless jargon and buzzwords.
• I don’t think we can say it enough: Flash!
• Portfolio: Just a few logos. Maybe a shot of an ad. The ROI is never mentioned. This link is always called “the work”
• Blogs: All staff members seem to take turns “writing posts” by copying / summarizing chapters out of the advertising textbooks they couldn’t sell back to their college bookstore.
• Content: It seems everyone shot down everyone else’s ideas until there was no content left
• Timeliness: Site is never updated. (except for every few years when the whole thing is torn down and replaced with something similar.) Rinse. Repeat.

I’m sure I’ve missed a few. Your thoughts?

If you’re not putting in the effort to get a pertinent message to the proper media outlet, why should they put in the effort to publicize your cause?

This came from a local office of one of the major national non-profits…

(click to make it bigger)

What a great move. Trash over 50 years of brand equity for something that makes me think of a dark dank dwelling in the Third World. Of course, it’s been coming for awhile. They’ve brand-extended themselves to oblivion instead of doing the core product (pizza!) well.

What makes it even more sad/funny is the delusion they’ve sold themselves and are now sending out in media relations…

…characterized the name change as an attempt to transform its stores into hip hangouts…..The new “hut” stores will be more than a place to simply pick up some take-out…they will include televisions that broadcast CBS programs such as “Wheel of Fortune” and “Entertainment Tonight.”

Because we all know the kids think that nothing can be more “hip” than Wheel of Fortune. Maybe they could reach back into the CBS archives and air old episodes of ‘Murder She Wrote’ to be even more hip.

They just may have a bad case of self-loathing with their name. They’ve tried to “rebrand” the Pizza Hut name on several previous occasions like “Pizza Hut Pizza & Pasta Cafe”, “Pizza Hut Italian Bistro”, “Pizza Hut WingStreet”, and the half-joking April Fools’ prank, “Pasta Hut”. A smart guy once said “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity”

Hey Yum!, listen up. The problem is not the Pizza Hut name. The problem is the customer experience. Even though your spokesperson, Christopher Fuller, gave a cheesy non-answer to real issues, the facts are clear in the public’s mind: Your employees don’t care. Your stores are dirty. Your service is horrible. (In one of my local Pizza Huts, there’s a sign above the lunch buffet that says not to even bother requesting any type of pizza because they aren’t going to do it.) And as I previously said in this post, you have forgotten your core product.

In kneejerk fashion, other chains may follow the move:

• Dominos will become “Backgammon”
• Papa Johns will become “Papa Smurfs”
• McDonalds will become “Mick”
• Taco Bell will become “The Bell”
• KFC will become “Sammy Nellas”
• Burger King will become “CP+B”

• Remember when the Macarena came out? You probably danced it at some public gathering for the few weeks it was popular. Then it went away. And then a few months later, you were at a gathering and a person played the song and thought they were on the hip cutting edge.
• Someone in your organization just discovered the concept of viral video.
• Has someone in the last year or so asked you if you were gettin’ jiggy with it?
• You get chain emails from them that were debunked on snopes.com years ago.

You’ve met these people, right?
These people are currently signing up for Facebook and Twitter accounts.

We’re over the adoption curve hump of Facebook and we’re steadily climbing it for Twitter which means people who aren’t necessarily online competent are now using online tools.

I’m sure you have at least one friend (probably more) on Facebook that you’re embarrassed FOR them because they post inappropriate things, spam you with requests, don’t realize that their friends can see their conversations/posts, etc. They’re new to the space, and still learning the ropes until they find out the proper etiquette.

For as much as the online world is an open-source / free-wheeling / anything-goes community, we all know there are rules…many of them unwritten ones. The community generally supports, instructs, or ignores individual newcomers when these “rules” are broken. (ALL CAPS, spam, chain emails, etc)

But that only goes for individuals. When a company / organization steps out into the water, it’s expected that they know how to swim. And that same supporting community for individuals becomes a lynch mob for corporate entities who make even minor mistakes. You’ve seen it happen.

And just as there are individuals who are laggards to the social media party, there are now companies who see the train passing by and figure they better get on — even if they don’t know what they are doing.

I am not saying that there is a “right way” to do social media. As I once tweeted…

how to spot a true “social media expert” — google their name and the phrase “NO, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!!!

But if your employees are venturing out onto social networks and are carrying the mantle of your organization, they need to at least understand the basics of social media and somewhat be cognizant of the “online rules”. Anything else is just asking for a disaster.

Many companies don’t see this looming disaster because they just see small numbers of customers engaging in social media with the organization and don’t understand the deep implications of making a mistake there. Remember this: Your email list, facebook fans, twitter followers, etc are some of your most important customers. These are the people who have stood up and said I WANT to engage with your company. They are the 20% of the 80/20 rule.

Why are you leaving this important group with the interns or inexperienced employees who have no idea how to talk to them?

I really hate this line from their introductory page:

We sincerely hope that the next time you need to make an important decision, you’ll Bing and decide.

Oh snap, Google!  See how they’ve verbed themselves!? What a fabulous marketing tactic for any company:
–Don’t treet my email address.
–Make me a canon of this document.
–Just stick a Curad on it.

I also dislike their look. They apparently decided to be everything that Google is not. Google’s page is clean with lots of white space. Bing looks cluttered with a background that is remnicent of a “ahem” PC desktop background.

But the big basic problem is that they’ve just slapped a new look on a pre-existing bad product. Live Search wasn’t good. “Rebranding” by slapping a new name on something is never the answer.

And what about that name? Among many other meanings, Bing means “disease” in Chinese. Nice. It’s callled research, boys. You could have googled it and found out.

Parody image of “tank tweet” by @shotgunconcepts.
Original photo by Jeff Widener (The Associated Press).

So Twitter is now blocked in China. I bet you could write a novel in 140 Chinese characters.

I guess since the new owners don’t like GM / Government Motors building gas-guzzlers, but don’t mind if other countries do — the Chinese can get cracking on building Hummers now that they are not wasting time their time sending tweets.

Obviously, a serious problem any time that there’s censorship, but I don’t understand today’s buzz. It’s China. That’s what they do.

Studies show that tips increase when the diner is given an after-dinner mint and the tip increases even more when the mint is personally handed to the diner by the waitstaff.

Free wi-fi is appreciated (and sometimes abused.)

The little things that you think you can easily cut — are the same things that are making your whole thing tick.

When you’re in marketing, people come to you and want you to help them tell others about their crazy ideas. And sometimes, by the time they want to “slap the marketing on“, they’ve already convinced themselves that their idea is a no-brainer home run winner.

And oftentimes, it’s not.

The guys in Seth’s post reminded me of a guy who has pitched a couple of ideas to me. Each time, he spoke in nothing except hyperbole. He had the best legal team. He has the best business plan. And after he uttered one phrase, I stopped listening to him…

“There’s no way that this can fail”.

Well, there’s always a way that something can fail. You may have a great plan that takes care of everything you can control, but there’s no way to accurately predict and plan for thousands of market variables that you have no control over. Even “foolproof” plans don’t account for things like a giant meteor impact destroying all life on the planet. (hyperbole!)

Some entrepreneurs have not only conditioned themselves to believing that their idea is failure-proof, but they also have trained themselves to ignore those who question the idea. The motivational speakers and books will say not to listen to people who say “no” and will trot out stories about Fred Smith getting a C in college when he described his idea for FedEx (which is not true) or Charles Duell, the commissioner of the patent office, saying in 1899 that “everything that can be invented has been” (also not true)

But, in reality, listening to constructive criticism is a good thing and something that you should seek out. If you really believe in your idea and really think it’s impenetrable, then you should encourage others to try to poke holes in it. Some of the most valuable and least appreciated people on your staff are the Devil’s Advocate and Debbie Downer. They’re keeping your feet on the ground while you’re reaching for the stars.

I’m not trying to kill your idea. I have many crazy ideas of my own. I’m lucky to have people around me that tell me to go for it. But I also have people who can see the problems with my line of thinking.

You should be optimistic and be confident in the possibility of your success. And without a doubt, you have to believe in yourself. If you don’t, no one else will. But you should also be pragmatic and work for your success by making your idea as bulletproof as possible.

Just don’t drink your own Kool-Aid. (or Flavor-Aid)

Seems it’s pretty hard to capture the essence of a fictional (or real life) written story into a screenplay. But what kind of huge challenge would be faced when making a non-fiction business book into a movie?

Apparently, we’re going to find out as Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink“ is going to be made into a movie starring Al Pacino. (no joke)

Possible Pacino movie quotes from Blink the movie?
(Scent of a Woman flavored) – “Chah-ley, my boy, in the first five seconds after approaching her table, I knew I would tango with her. Hoo-hah! I’m just gettin’ stah-ted!”
(The Godfather flavored) – “Fredo, don’t thin slice anyone against the Family again.”

I digress.

What if this catches on? What if other business books are adapted to the screen?

–In Search of Excellence
by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman
Two dudes travel through time collecting important people from business history for an oral presentation in their MBA program.

–Guerrilla Marketing
by Jay Conrad Levinson
In 1972, a crack commando marketing unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as guerrilla marketers. If you have a marketing problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire… The Guerrilla Marketing Team.

–The Wealth of Nations
by Adam Smith
Socialists send a cyborg assassin back in time to kill Adam Smith’s mother.

–War in the Boardroom
by Al and Laura Ries
An Army Major is assigned a dozen convicted creatives/marketers to train and lead them to infiltrate an off site meeting of CEOs at a chateau in France.

–100 Best Business Books of All Time
by Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten
Kramer tries to convince Elaine to pitch his idea for a “business book about business books” to Mr. Lippman.

–The Wisdom of Crowds
by James Surowieki
A tidal wave overturns an ocean liner. People must make the decision to stay put with the majority or follow a ragtag group up through the bowels of the ship.

–Purple Cow
by Seth Godin
A spider uses outdoor advertising in a high traffic area on the farm to convince others that a cow is “remarkable” and “some cow”

What are your ideas? What biz book would you like to see made into a movie? Leave them in the comments. Also — bonus points for anyone in the comments who can list the movies/tv shows I’ve based these descriptions on.