Last week I was one-upped.
Hasan Syed, a dissatisfied British Airways customer (are there any other kind?), paid $1000 for a promoted tweet and bashed BA for their horrible customer service. It was the first time a consumer purchased a promoted tweet for the sole purpose of complaining about a brand.
But it won't be the last.
The story of Mr. Syed's anger, and his response, took on a life of its own. It's estimated with all the news coverage, his promoted tweet was worth $7 million dollars in bad word of mouth advertising for BA.
Am I jealous?
Of course, I'm jealous.
You might recall earlier in the year my family and I took a trip to Europe, to see family in Scotland and to finally shut my daughters up about going to Paris. The vacation was wonderful. The trip over on British Airways was not.
The 747 we were on was built in 1971 and was originally designed to accommodate 283 souls. However, some dim-witted douchebags in the British Airways accounting department decided the massive engine thrust was being underutilized. So they reconfigured the fuselage and installed 67 additional seats.
The crated cockapoodle in the cargo hold had more legroom than I did.
When I got home, I did what every other disgruntled airline passenger does, I wrote letters. All to no avail. And then I decided to do what Mr. Syed did, take my case to the people.
So I borrowed some imagery from the Holocaust, who by comparison had it much easier, and composed an outdoor board which I was going to place at a strategic location on Century Blvd.
Here's what it would have looked like to customers approaching LAX:
I was ready to pull the trigger.
And anybody that knows me knows I would have done so.
But the cost was prohibitive. And I would have had a hard explaining to my daughter that she couldn't go to college because Daddy blew the money on a novelty billboard to make a hyperbolic point about a crappy flight to Heathrow Airport.
Thankfully, these promoted tweets are within my budget.
Which means this post will serve as a word of warning to the Nordictrack people if they don't get my stationary bike fixed.
Pronto.
The planner insight is that people don't carry on that much luggage because of the fees. The account person wants to know why the people can't seem happier about boarding. The art buyer isn't sure she can secure the rights to the photo. The client would like the logo bigger. Digital wants to know if they can animate it for a banner ad. Social wants to know if they can use the hashtag #BritishAirSucks. And the project manager says it has to be out the door by 2PM. Please get back to us with revisions.
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