United Missed Their Own Flight

While reading  Real-Time Marketing & PR written by David Meerman Scott, you will read in the first two chapters how United Airlines missed a really good opportunity to put themselves ahead of other airlines. In 2008, a Taylor Guitar owned by Dave Carroll was broken during transit because of the ground crew throwing them into the plane. Right away after the flight, the band told the stewardess. Basically the band got brushed off. Well that is when United was going to be a few minutes late to their own preverbal gate. Right there is when United should have taken the opportunity to correct their mistake and start the process of fixing the problem. Instead they did not.

Dave Carroll did everything he could to try and get them to take responsibility and fix the problem when United just kept pushing him away. Dave Carroll made music videos responding to this and became an overnight superstar. Taylor Guitars and Calton Cases took notice in the music videos and used them for their own advantages. Taylor Guitars replaced Dave Carroll's guitar and then made their own video about how they can fix broken guitars and how to properly pack them for travel. Calton Cases developed a line of cases called the Carroll Cases and sold many. The cases focuses were of those for traveling musicians. United Airlines did nothing but repeating the same phrase of "No comment". For saying that phrase over and over again, figuratively United has to run to their gate and hope they have not closed the doors yet.

What's going on United?! You missed your chances to really show you are a good caring company. I mean in the end you did offer to pay for the fix, but it was too late. Dave Carroll was already going further into his career, and said to give the money to someone else who has suffered the same thing. United could have right from the beginning paid for the repairs or replacement guitar, and create promo videos about safe traveling for your customer's items. There were so many chances you could have taken to improve your company and even get yourself out there more for more potential clients.

United, you missed your flight now because of all of this. The employee at the gate would not except your reason of "No comment".

Is Facebook Old?!?

I was in one of my other classes here at Ohio Northern University called History of Technology. The class is about how we went from using bones and rocks to the technology of today. The teacher was going around asking what social media are we on because social media counts as technology. Well, I told my professor which social medias I am on, and he stopped me when I got to Facebook. He looked at me straight in the eyes and said, "Wait you're on Facebook!? Facebook is old!" Now this professor is at least twice my age or older. Facebook was not even invented when he was my age! How can he say, Facebook is old while I am still on. I mean, all my friends still use Facebook. I hear people say in passing, "I'll look for you on Facebook!" Facebook cannot be old if I am still using it because I do not think I am not that old. I mean, I am still in college. My grandparents are what you call "old". The comment he said stuck with me throughout the whole class period. I could not get the comment out of my head.

Then I thought about what he said when class was over. Facebook is starting to become less popular in the generations below me. The younger generation are more interested in Twitter, Instagram and other sites. So maybe for my generation, Facebook is starting to get old. I will never see Facebook as "getting old" or out of style though. I will continue to use it for keeping in contact with family and friends, finding trending news stories and something to look at while I wait for time to pass.