WOW, the power of Word-of-Mouth Marketing… in this case, using YouTube’s viral marketing properties.

I recently received this email in my personal email account and thought this to be an excellent example of word-of-mouth marketing and its power.

It’s actually a true story and you can read (and listen) to the whole story on http://www.davecarrollmusic.com/ubg/.

The email that is circulating among friends:

Subject: United Breaks Guitars

This is clever way to “pay back”… notice over 7 million hits on this YouTube video…. a company spends millions on advertising and screws it up with one error like this. There used to be a business axiom that said “If you do something right, the customer will tell 3 other people; when you do some wrong, the customer will tell 20 other people”. This guy made the odds even worse for United Airlines.

United breaks guitars…….a gem!

A musician named Dave Carroll recently had difficulty with United Airlines. United apparently damaged his treasured Taylor guitar ($3500) during a flight. Dave spent over 9 months trying to get United to pay for damages caused by baggage handlers to his custom Taylor guitar. During his final exchange with the United Customer Relations Manager, he stated that he was left with no choice other than to create a music video for youtube exposing their lack of cooperation.

The Manager responded : “Good luck with that one, pal”. So he posted a retaliatory video on youtube.

The video has since received over 7 million hits. United Airlines contacted the musician and attempted settlement in exchange for pulling the video. Naturally his response was: “Good luck with that one, pal”. Taylor Guitars sent the musician 2 new custom guitars in appreciation for the product recognition from the video that has lead to a sharp increase in orders..

Here’s the video …. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo