So today’s blog is about how 9 year-old Harry mailed his drawing of an airplane to Boeing corporation and they gave him back a cold response. The plot thickens because Harry's dad happens to be an ad agency CEO. Harry's dad decides to discuss this on his blog and twitter and gets the attention of the online world. I personally believe that Boeing should have handled the situation much better than telling Harry that they don't accept unsolicited ideas. After the word gets out the Boeing Corporation decided to be a little bit more polite with its response and actually started to show they care.
I believe this was due to the online world and an example of how the online world can put a big corporation in check. In an update to this rejection letter Harry's dad talks about how tens of thousands of people have read his post and hundreds have retweeted it. http://www.johnwinsor.com/my_weblog/2010/05/harry-and-boeing-the-update.html. After all that commotion Boeing got many people involved and tried to fix their image. The future of flight institution invited Harry to host the “Harry Winsor design your own airplane show" and the Museum of flight offered Harry a free tour.
I don't believe that Harry's dad used this as an opportunity to get free publicity but his CEO status did help him succeed. His ability to crowd sourcing to so many people is what made Boeing realize they made a mistake. I personally wouldn't hold anything against Boeing because I believe it was an honest mistake. They are so use to having that corporate mindset that they didn't know any better. Boeing did learn from their mistakes and used this as a learning experience. They did all they could to make the situation better and now know how to interact with people much better. I also don't believe that the airlines will boycott Boeing because it was an honest mistake and no one was really hurt. Harry’s dreams were not crushed; they were only turned into reality. If my kid wanted to mail a drawing into Boeing I would defiantly send it in with the confidence that they will respond in an appropriate manner.
I wonder what would happen if elementary schools around the country started having "airplane designing contests" and mailed thousands and thousands of plane designs to Boeing. The unsolicited airplane concepts (regardless whether drawn in crayon or by a skilled draftsperson) would likely have to be returned to the senders with legal documentation stating that Boeing doesn't accept unsolicited ideas. We do live in a litigious world and you could imagine some parents suing Boeing when a plane came out years later looking suspiciously like their kid's design. Then again, Harry's design wasn't all that innovative (see a picture on Max P.'s blog at http://emarketingmadesimple.blogspot.com/2010/09/social-media-works-wonders-in-web-20.html). Yeah, I know, he's only a kid, but when I'd heard about this, I guess I was expecting something really out of the box.
ReplyDeleteI believed Boeing used this as a learning process. They discovered how powerful the social media machine is. Its unfortunate it had to be this way where the entire world was able to see a sort of lack of compassion (at first) from such a large company. As far as publicity for John Winsors company. I believe there was a lot of wanted attention thrown his way and seeing that Mr. Winsor is a crowd sourcing social media professional it makes sense that he did benefit by bringing this to the attention of “social medialites.” Boeing does receive a considerable amount of unsolicited project proposals and this was their way of responding in reference to their policy and procedures on how to handle the submissions. In order for Boeing to not seem as such a “Big Bad Company” they turned to spinning the issue by offering the museum trips and hosting position to Harry.
ReplyDeleteThis further emphasizes how the social media era has revolutionized the power of consumers.
ReplyDeleteCustomer relations in business in pre-internet era was marked by one voice (that of the company), and the audience (the consumers). Main element in pre-internet era is the lack of ability of consumers to communicate with one another--unless you had a lot of money to buy a billboard space or television ad to voice your rage on that crappy return-policy.
Because of social media, consumers can now communicate with other consumers. But more importantly, their voice is just as loud as a $2 million Superbowl commercial. This new dimension is great for consumers and businesses alike.
Unless of course, you're a business who doesn't care about your consumers.
As beautifully portrayed in your article, businesses MUST reevaluate their core values and if customer satisfaction is not among their priories, they should expect to get crushed by competitors who genuinely care for consumers.
I disagree with you, I believe that this issue was completely blown out of proportion as a promotional strategy from the get go. Harry's father is the CEO of an advertising company, meaning that he knew exactly what to do and how to do it in order to show how he can position a company on top of the PR world or destroy it's image using social networking tools and other innovative free and available media.
ReplyDeleteAlso, this was a tailored message to the Boeing corporation and other big companies, that they should start caring about their online PR and image, which is something that most big corporations tend to forget.
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ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you here.. Harry's dad didn't mean to get that type of publicity, but how lucky was he that this thing blew up and now his company has gotten all sorts of publicity. I know there's a lot of people who think Harry's father is some big CEO who masterminded this whole thing, but if that's really the case, then doesn't he kind of deserve to have his company be well known? Because he must be a pretty big genius.
ReplyDeleteThis incident caught Boeing by surprise. They were just following company policy and now the drawing is all over the news. Boeing underestimated the power of social media and this was a reality check for them! Lesson learned: IT IS NECESSARY TO KEEP UP WITH TECHNOLOGY.
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