Real-Time Engagement

This week, our Principles of Social Media class has begun reading "Real-Time Marketing & PR" by David Meerman Scott. This book is not about the typical social media tips and outlined do's and don't's of the PR world. "Real-Time Marketing & PR" is about growing your business now and the understanding that speed and agility are decisive and competitive advantages now more than they have ever been.

In his book, Scott discusses exactly this: "Scale and media buying power are no longer a decisive advantage. What counts today is speed and agility." The rules have changed and the mass media no longer dictates the conversations the public will have.

The first chapter of the book discusses a case study between singer-songwriter Dave Carroll and United Airlines. After Dave's expensive guitar was damaged due to lack of care on the United Airlines staff's part, Dave attempted to report the issue and went through a long, frustrating process before he was informed that United would not be giving him any kind of compensation for the damage. After jumping through hoops with customer service for United, Dave received no compensation and no signs of commiseration from the airline.

Dave took matters into his own hands. As stated earlier, the scale and media buying power are no longer a decisive advantage; what counts is speed and agility. Dave did not have a large scale case to make or media buying power, but he quickly addressed the issue and broadcasted his response in an agile way through his song "United Breaks Guitars". The more people who watched this video and listened to Dave's story about his destroyed guitar and lack of compensation, United Airlines reputation began to spiral. After only four days, the video had reached 1million views on YouTube and continued to grow to by millions after. This is an example of the importance of speed in real-time media relations and a story about real-time market engagement.

Speed, agility and a bit of creativity and craft skill can be the deciding factors to whether you accomplish real-time engagement or your organization fails. Dave is a great example of how it is possible for anyone to have the competitive advantages as long as speed and agility are accomplished first.