The musician Dave Carroll was taking a trip to Nebraska when he and his band members noticed that their guitars were being broken outside. After complaining to the culprits (United Airlines staff) and getting nowhere he decided to write a song which I have to admit is pretty catchy.
It turns out that the song is so catchy that 3.7million people have now watched his video and it has propelled him to a new level of stardom. In fact, the track is in the top 20 in Canada. It just goes to show what a good idea, some humour and a catchy riff can achieve on the Internet through social media.
According to Rolling Stone:
He returned home from his tour last Sunday night to 4,000 e-mails from people with commiserating stories, offers and praise for his music. Carroll says his personal Website had gone from 40 to 50 hits a week ago to 50,000 by Thursday. Sales of Sons of Maxwell’s eight albums and Carroll’s solo disc have increased from “one or two a day online to probably hundreds,” he estimates, thanks to his viral smash. Other airlines have offered him free trips to experience their customer service and Bob Taylor of Taylor Guitars personally telephoned, offering two guitars of his choice and props to use in the second video about the incident.
“Everybody was calling for that song the minute we hit the stage,” says Carroll. “It was unbelievable, 1,500 people raising their hands in the air to the ‘united breaks guitars’ tag line in the chorus.”
In case you missed the video here it is.
Chris Norton is the founder of Prohibition and an award winning communications consultant with more than twenty years’ experience. He was a lecturer at Leeds Beckett University and has had a varied PR career having worked both in-house and in a number of large consultancies. He is an Integrated PR and social media blogger and writes on a wide variety of blogs across a huge amount of topics from digital marketing, social media marketing right through to technology and crisis management.
