For those not paying attention (and why would you) Kevin Smith got kicked off a plane because people of his size are required to buy two seats on a full airplane and he didn’t. He tweeted his outrage (and has continued to do so in a gloriously self promoting manner) which caused some media outlets to pick up the story.
That’s all fine with me. Celebrities self promote. It’s in the job description. My problem is when people try to turn this into a “power of new media” story. See Caroline McCarthy of CNet (bold by me)…
This may be the best example we've seen yet of how Twitter and other forms of new-media mass communication are shaping that old industry known as public relations. Nobody walks around with a Twitter follower count or blog URL painted on his or her forehead, and many extremely popular bloggers still live in relative physical anonymity, which means that the customer relations business is like a game of Minesweeper--you can never be sure what might blow up in your face.
PR and customer service are two different divisions of a company. But this incident shows how, in the Digital Age, the two are increasingly overlapping. With Twitter, many companies are conducting customer relations in the public eye, and a company's response to a high-profile disgruntled customer may require dispatching the PR team. Good communication between the two is obviously key.
At the same time, Smith's situation may be a fairly unique one. He's a high-profile individual with a loyal cult…
The last sentence, a journalistic hedge, hints at the point I’m trying to make here. This is news BECAUSE it’s Kevin Smith and because he’s trying to get attention. If the year was 1997 and a celebrity of Kevin Smith’s stature put out a press release the same thing would have happened. The “Digital Age” didn’t change anything.
For example Ivana Trump, a smaller celebrity than Kevin Smith (no pun intended), didn’t even need a press release to get her story in the news…
Ivana Trump was tossed off a plane in Florida Saturday after she got into a shouting match with screaming kids running in the aisles, police said.
Trump, 60, became even more belligerent when flight attendants on the New York-bound plane tried to calm her from yelling at the children, officials said.
In truth, you don’t need to be a celebrity if your story is unique enough and you’re willing to make a fuss. In fact you don’t even need to actually get kicked off the plane. Ask Kyla Ebbert…
Apparently the outfit Kyla Ebbert wore on the “Today” show Friday was acceptable for a national television audience of millions, but not quite up to the rigid standards set down by Southwest Airlines.
Ebbert, accompanied by her mom and her attorney, appeared with Matt Lauer to discuss a recent incident in which she was at first asked to leave a flight before it departed fromSan Diego to Tucson because the flight attendants felt her attire was too revealing. When she convinced them that she would adjust her outfit to meet their requirements, she was allowed to remain onboard.
Finally, just to prove the point I’d like to give one more example that’s found on Twitter. I found Nate Abbott while scanning other Tweets from @southwestair…
Where was his media storm? Since Twitter is such a high publicity venue you’d think it would have been enough to at least get him on the local news.
For the record I do agree on the Customer Service point. It helps SouthWest Air, and really any company, to be available in as many ways as possible. Including Twitter. So I think it’s great they have a Twitter account and a blog to provide help.
But the reason for this post is to refute the idea that “everything’s new in the digial age”. Almost nothing is new in the digital age, it’s just faster. If Kevin Smith had called a tech support line and made a fuss the news story would be just as big. Companies need to realize that ALL FORMS of customer service are PR and act accordingly. Because that has always been and will always be the case.