Real-Time Marketing & PR – Chapter 1

Real-Time Marketing & PR is a book about that predominately focuses on the importance of connecting with customers.  It even says it on the cover.  It discusses how to “instantly engage your market, connect with customers and create products that grow your business now.”  Sounds like a good book not just for Public Relations professionals but also for entrepreneurs.  PR pros could use this book as a means of molding a company’s image to a certain public.  If you instantly engage your market, you are bound to get more success.  It seems as if this is a PR principle, but it’s a necessity for any business to succeed in a certain market.

The main point made by author David Meerman Scott in the first chapter is the importance of speed and agility.  When it comes to being agile, the bigger person doesn’t always win.  In fact, you could say they rarely win.  The example Scott uses is the story of Dave Carroll, a Canadian musician in the pop-folk band called Sons of Maxwell, who had his guitar tragically abused by United Airlines.  The crux of the story is that United Airlines workers handled his guitar in an irresponsible way (literally throwing it) and broke it.  Obviously, the company was responsible for any and all damages that happened to the guitar since it was United employees who broke it.  However, the company refused to acknowledge Carroll’s claim and didn’t pay for it.  So Carroll, in a rather genius move, took another route to voice his frustrations and get back a United Airlines.  He composed a short music video singing about how United Airlines broke his guitar.  The video went viral, and United was in a PR crisis.

The speed at which the problem snowballed was literally viral.  As the video grew ever so popular and Carroll became the “celebrity of the moment,” United Airlines continued to remain silent about the incident.  Their PR department said nothing about what happened, never offered an apology and never issued a statement of any kind.  This is not just a great example of how speed and agility is more important now in marketing and PR than at any other time in history, it also identifies how to not respond in a crisis situation.  Nowadays, with so many different media platforms connecting billions of people, the speed at which things happen is unparalleled.  Therefore, handling a public relations crisis for businesses can be much harder.