Zapylacz – Blog

Archive for the ‘customers’ Category

And we all thought that the United Airlines’ had had enough, but wait a minute, not everyone thinks so. Dave Carroll (whose guitar was broken by United staff) has produced a 2nd song in the series “United Breaks Guitars”. While the first song surpassed 3 million views in 10 days, 4,983,199 views when I saw last, Carroll has released a 2nd song and looks like he’ll fulfill his promise of 3 songs.
I guess nothing much that United can do now, except for seeing the hits on the video increase and wait for the 3rd song. Hail Social Media.
Not much to talk, I think time to enjoy the song, here it is.

In an attempt to explain why companies need Social Media Branding we started a series last week. The series will comprise of cases where Social Media has affected companies/brands/individuals in a good or bad manner. Last time we posted the case of the United Airlines Stock Crash case, incidentally this time also we post a story which is concerned with United Airlines.
The Case : A Canadian guy travels on a United Airlines flight, but on reaching his destination he sees that his guitar had been damaged by the airline personnel. He pursued the airlines for an year for the damages but when he saw there was no response from them, he put up a video on Youtube which said “United Breaks Guitars”. Being a musician himself he composed a nice song and it became an instant hit. See video :

Effect : When the video views reached 50,000, United Airlines contacted the person and paid him damages and tried to hush up the case. But it had been quite late by then, the net’s a Virus. The video had spread virally to all corners of the world already.

Result : Although United Airlines cleaned up the mistake but now the incident has become one of the most talked about incidents in the Social Media Industry. With the story on CNN and the video reaching a massive 4,000,000+ views the Airline has taken a bashing already. What worsens up the matter is that even if google for United Airlines, you get a first page result of the youtube video “United Breaks Guitars”.

Point to Learn : If you are a service oriented company, you ought to listen to your customers. Had this incident happened a decade ago, it would have never come into limelight as not everyone approaches the media. But in this present scenario, when nobody is out of media, everybody has the power to spread the word and it can really bring more damages as this new form of media has empowered the customers and the best thing is that this is un-censored.
Don’t underestimate the new age customer and the new media – Social Media.

We have been asked a lot over the reality of social media, is it a fad, is it for real, is it here to stay, does Indian market  really needs it ? There have points like : Okay, it’s working for others so what ! What if I don’t benefit from it ? Is it worth the money I pay you ?

And the most common one SHOW ME SOME STATS. While we have made a road map to answer the rest and have already started answering them in a series of posts, the STATS answer is Right Here Right Now.

I guess you cannot question us again on the stats. The only thing that might be concerning you is that India does not have substantial internet reach as compared to the developed nations. My answer to that is : Okay, it does not have the same reach PRESENTLY but does not mean that it will NEVER reach there. It’s just a matter of time when we are there, and with our population way over the other developed nations, we have a much bigger market to target. The only question to ask yourself is whether you want be there before your target or wait till your competitor reaches your target audience. The question “Whether or not I should be there” is gone now, it’s only a question of WHEN ?

Time and again I face this question or rather answer from reputed people that,

Things will happen after all the Internet is FREE

Ideally these people are rated very high in the business circles because of the success they have had in their various sectors but achieving success in one field does not make you a champion in all the other fields automatically. But how much does Sachin Tendulkar knows about the technicalities of the Ferrari F-50 Spider ? Probably next to nothing and that’s what my answer is to all those people who feel that “Internet Is FREE”.

Recently we have been meeting a lot of people, some of them high profile businessmen, some IIM-Grads and some of them who have non-Internet startups. Though most of them quite senior to me but some of them also also fall in or near my age group. Initially I thought that people in the age group > 45 do not understand the power of internet and hence they say. But when I saw that people even on the other side of the above mentioned age group not understanding the situation I had alarm bells ringing in my head that clearly said ‘this is not going to be easy’, in fact “it’s going to be very tough”.

I guess you are still wondering what that blog post topic means. Let’s get to it straightaway. Ok the internet for you is free in office, maybe at home you spend some 800 INR and get that connection working and since then you assume that it’s free.

Let me ask a very basic question, When we start our machines, what is that we do? Open our mailboxes, open some social networking sites, search for something which we require, a restaurant or a new mobile or some place or some person or anything of our interest. Now let’s say that there was no Orkut, no Facebook, no Twitter, no blogs and no Google. Then what do you do? No don’t say, if no Google then I use a Yahoo or a Bing. My question is if there was no website where you would find the information, what worth would the internet be to YOU ? If there is no content to read or browse then what do we do ? If there is no facebook or orkut then how do I stay in touch with my friends ? Obviously I can’t call everyone ! So no content results equals to no internet. Now even if you spend 800 bucks on that connection you won’t have anything to do over the internet if there’s nothing to read or see.

My point is that the Content is King, not internet. Internet might be free but it’s the content that costs. Any blog post that has been written, it requires time and effort to be written. And what I am trying to explain is that time and effort equals Money in the real world. The day labnol or mashable or chrisbrogan stop earning money from their blogs, why would they do it ? Why would starbucks do a twitter or a facebook campaign for their patrons ? Why would someone bother to answer a bad review for a Dell that a customer made on their website or somewhere else for that matter. All these things require time and effort to be put in and obviously TIME and EFFORT are equivalent to MONEY if spoken in the Layman Businessman’s language. So how could you term the Internet Free if it has no value without the CONTENT.

Well those are my views let me know what you feel, would love to engage in discussions.

How many times have we wondered that this is not what I want to to do in life but still staying in that job or on that profile ? Then the very next second the next question arises ? Why am i doing it if I don’t want to do ? Why don’t I quit ? And it doesn’t take long to get the answer as well. I am doing it for money! What do I do if I quit this ? Where will I earn my living from ? And then when we don’t find an answer to that we forget all our questions and then continue doing what we currently hate to do.

The problem is not with us, it’s natural to think of such things and to care about our living before thinking of anything else. So in that case how do we bail ourselves out ? How do we move out from our present condition ? Well the answer to that question is called iReboot.

iReboot, a unique and only one of its kind firm in India, let’s you experience your dream job or in simpler words find what you want to do in life and that too without even taking the risk of moving out from your present job.  Yes that’s why iReboot is unique. You might find many career counsellors who will try to help you figure out what you want to do and then leave you with 10 options to try which you will never try because you don’t know where to go and more importantly won’t want to lose your current source of income.

Mukta at iReboot allows you to try a few options for a couple of days along with a mentor, who will guide you in the job you are trying, and then decide for yourself whether you want to take make a career out of that job.  And best thing is that you don’t need to quit your job before you try the dream job opportunity. Isn’t it great ?

Rajiv went onto become a chef at a restaurant in Indiranagar, Bangalore and along with his mentor Manjit, cooked dinner for the guests that night.

Rajiv trying out his dream job with mentor Manjit

When we are dissatisfied with our jobs we tend to think of hundreds of fields which we can excel in but have never had the option to try it out, but I guess not you cannot complain as iReboot has come to your rescue.

Well as of now iReboot operates in Bangalore and Mysore but it is growing at a fast pace. Having featured in Livemint and Hindu already, Mukta plans to spread iReboot’s wings to the all the metros nationwide.