Sure, it’s a catchy tune and will infect your head so you find yourself humming it at odd times, but whoever though “United Breaks Guitars” would show the power of the new form of consumer activism.  It’s complaintatainment!

In case you haven’t see the video by Sons of Maxwell, a Canadian band, singing about their struggles to get United Airlines to accept responsibility for a broken guitar, well you’re in for treat.  It’s actually great singing and lyrics.  I’ll give you the link in a second.

The bigger part of the story, though, is about how anyone can say anything about you and your company.  We all have those less than finest hours.  And although we hope that our customer service policy can turn anyone into a raving fan, even when we mess up, sometimes it’s not possible.  Plus, there are the times when you run into a just plain crazy person.  It’s pretty hard to solve someone’s problem when they aren’t reasonable or even rational.

So what do you do if someone goes viral with a complaint about your company?  Learn from United Airlines…and do everything opposite!

Respond quickly and with clear solutions.  Don’t ignore a problem.  Don’t pretend that 2.5 million views of a cute video won’t affect your next shareholder’s meeting.

Here’s a good article about that: http://mattsingley.com/blog/2009/07/why-you-must-deal-with-negative-pr/