Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines: A social media case study
If you took some time off yesterday to spend it with a loved one, you might of missed the Twitter cage match that went down between writer, actor and director Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines. I am not going to supply the blow by blow details, but you can read all about it on Gawker.
To summarize what took place, Kevin Smith was removed from a Southwest Airline plane because the captain deemed him too large to fly in just one seat. According to reports, Kevin was strapped in and on the plane and was forced to get his things and leave the plane before takeoff.
If something like this happened to you, you would be embarrassed and probably pretty pissed off. Kevin was and immediately took to his Twitter account with more than 1 million followers to express his anger and frustration towards Southwest Airlines.
This incident and Southwest Airlines “size policy” is going to be debated for weeks. I think both sides have valid points. Though this is not what I want to cover in this post. What I want to focus on is the great social media case study this incident represents.
An out of touch captain for Southwest Airlines kicks a famous person off of his plane. Kevin Smith would absolutely be considered an influencer as he has more than a million Twitter followers, not to mention millions more who watch his movies, read his books and listen to his podcasts. No matter who you believe is right or wrong, you have to take your hat off to Southwest Airlines for how they handled this crisis.
Let’s remember that all this took place beginning Saturday night and things got interesting Sunday Valentine’s Day. Let’s break down the game film:
Kevin Smith sent out the first tweet on this incident at 8:52 pm on Saturday Feb 13th:
ThatKevinSmith: Dear @SouthwestAir – I know I’m fat, but was Captain Leysath really justified in throwing me off a flight for which I was already seated?
Southwest replied to Smith’s tweet a little under six hours later on Sunday Feb 14 at 3:10 am:
@SouthwestAir “Hopefully you received our voicemail earlier this evening” All lines checked, no voicemail message on any 323. Try again.
This began a back and forth Twitter throw down that Southwest Airlines could not win. When you are dealing with an influencer who has the backing of his people, right or wrong, the people are going to have their say against the big bad corporation. This is where Southwest’s social media strategy truly took flight.
They did the following:
- They responded to each individual who tweeted to @SouthwestAir about the situation. No matter how mean the tweet was, they responded. They apologized that Mr. Smith had to go through what he did and explained their company policy.
- They posted a blog post once again apologizing, but also explained the airlines position. When their blog went down because of all the traffic they were receiving, they moved their blog post to another Web site so people could read it.
- If you check out the comments on the blog post, you will see users who left comments with curses and writing some not so nice things about Southwest. Did they remove these comments or take the easy route and just turn the comments off, no. (Note: the Web site is still real slow because of all the traffic they are getting. You might not be able to get to this page.)
- They had a VP from Southwest reach out and speak to Kevin Smith on the phone.
Can I remind you that all this took place on a Sunday. How many large publicly traded corporations could of turned all this around within eight hours during the work week let alone on a holiday weekend?
Whether you agree or disagree with Southwest and the incident, the one thing I think we can all agree upon is how well Southwest has handled this crisis. Instead of running and hiding, they immediately engaged in the online conversations. They did so without legal or corporate communications double speak, their responses were conversational and honest. They knew they were going to take a beating but still decided to pull up a chair and be a part of the conversation. More corporations should learn from this incident and how Southwest dealt with a crisis in the electronic age.
Special shout out has to go to Christi Day. She is a member of Southwest’s Social Media team and was the author of the blog posts, comments and tweets this weekend. Christi did a phenomenal job during what had to be a challenging time.
When I have developed and presented social media training for C-suites and Corporate Communications clients, I try to get across a couple of main points.
- In social media, you cannot control the conversation. Don’t even try. Your goal is to listen, understand, engage and potentially influence.
- You are never going to make everyone happy or solve everyone’s problem. Using this case study as an example, Kevin Smith is not going to be a fan of Southwest Airlines no matter what they say now. But Southwest understands that they are fighting for the hearts and minds of the thousands possibly millions of other people who are witnessing and discussing this incident online.
- Finally, half the battle is just showing up. Southwest knew they could not win this argument. They knew they were going to take their lumps, but they understood that not engaging in these conversations would be shortsighted and deliver far worse results.
What I think more corporate executives need to realize is something like this will at some time happen to their company. It is not a question of if, but when.
GREAT POST, Cord! I completely agree with your sentiments and thought the same thing the whole time. WOW! How brave they were and it shows what an honest company they are that they were able to really engage in both the positive and negative aspects of the conversation.
And yeah, Christi did a PHENOMENAL job handling it. I would not want to be in her shoes right now.
Again, great post.
The bottom of their Blog post sums up all the reasons very well as to why he was forced off of the flight. They are all valid and are for the safety of everyone on board, including Kevin.
SouthWest had to respond to the Twitter post, though I do hope they will do the same for every other complaint or commendation they receive.
Thank you so much for your kind words Molly! Appreciate your thoughts and feedback.
Good article Cord. It’s great to see that Southwest “took their lumps” and reacted in a timely manner. Looks like they learned from the Motrin Mom’s playbook.
The only point I would like to comment on is this one: “An out of touch captain for Southwest Airlines kicks a famous person off of his plane. Kevin Smith would absolutely be considered an influencer as he has more than a million Twitter followers, not to mention millions more who watch his movies, read his books and listen to his podcasts.”
In today’s social media celebrity reality, how will we determine who is a “famous person”? Having a million twitter followers is not as hard as it once was. And it can be argued that a random “nobody” (in terms of celebrity) with 1 follower could do damage to a company or brand. It may not be as easy or as quick, but it can be just as proportionally damaging.
That is a reality every brand needs to start worrying about.
Dan, I hear ya, but I think it’s a little naive to think that Southwest or any other company would pull out all the stops if Kevin Smith did not have a million followers. Life would be great if everyone got this kind of attention.
Gregory,
Thanks for your comment and I agree with your point. Anyone who puts in the time and effort can have their voice be heard online. I think that is one of the amazing things about our business today. I think what I was trying to get across was these issues are going to happen whether a person has a million followers or not. Mistakes are going to be made and customers are going to be unhappy. How companies does with it will have a big impact on their long term success.
I agree with Greg. There are those people out there like Justine Ezarik who would slip under the radar as nobody to a lot of people. I know she has been in a few TV spots but she is hardly a celeb.
That said, her ijustine twitter account has 1,135,791 followers. I have watched her post a photo on twitter and within 5 minutes the link has been hit over 1,000 times. These are the people that companies really need to worry about.
Kevin Smith has said (in tweets and in his podcast) that he did NOT get a call from anyone at Southwest.
The social media response was especially well done. Now if they had only demonstrated the same level of skill in handling traditional customer service by actually calling Kevin Smith as the social media team said would be done, then perhaps this tweetstorm could have been defused right then and there.
What I take away from this incident is that while social media is an important tool for reaching customers and handling problems, it is not a replacement for good old fashion customer service staples (like a personal call or an actual Southwest employee at the gate ready to address the situation).
Companies can not neglect other areas of customer service just because their social media outfit is on the ball.
Chris, good point.. Like anything in life there are people who carry bigger sticks than others.
Taylor, I hear what you are saying, but I don’t agree that this is a good old customer service issue. Whether someone from Southwest called Kevin Smith or not, I don’t think it is relevant. Kevin is going to be angry at Southwest whether they call him or not. They kicked him off of a plane for being too fat. I don’t care how many people call him and apologize, Southwest will never be on his Christmas card list. My point was Southwest was focusing on the thousands of people reading and participating in these conversations online and trying to get their point across.
Thank you both for your comments.
What I thought the most interesting part of this was the Kevin Smith turned down an interview with ABC news which would have given him a lot more exposure to tell his side of the story and instead told it via a podcast. This was truly a social media battle leaving out all traditional media outlets.
Let’s count the ways: Twitter, blogs and podcasts not to mention the mobile component.
Thanks for this piece Cord, the guys love real world examples that in this case shows the power and speed of social networking, despite being a traditionally slow news time (Holiday Weekend).
Now if I could only get some of these Iraqis on Facebook… (Actually interesting work-around… Since they weren’t able to officially campaign until a certain date, many posted their campaigns on facebook to get a head start. Suddenly facebook provides accessibility and credibility because a guy has a website.)