Over the weekend, director
Kevin Smith was kicked off a
Southwest Air flight for, as he says in his own words, being "way too fat."
What ensued was a social media case study, a veritable Twitterpalooza between Smith and Southwest Air's Twitter person. Smith was, understandably, upset by the way Southwest handled the whole situation, and took to his 1.6 million Twitter followers to explain his outrage. Southwest's Twitter person responded quickly to Smith, and escalated it up the Southwest chain.
As for Smith's POV, it's all on his
podcast, where he explains his side of it (Southwest said that he always buys 2 seats, which he doesn't). He totally and completely falls within their guidelines they have posted on their site ("able to put down both armrests" and "buckle seat belt").
Southwest put up a
blog post where they kind of apologize to him, but don't really. They say why he's wrong and why they were justified in kicking him off.
The bigger issue here (no pun intended) is how most companies view the FB/Twitter side of PR/outreach as a side project, as opposed to something to actually have a plan around.*
Reality check: your Twitter account shouldn't be assigned to an intern.
What I find sad is that big companies who seemingly only pay attention when someone who has a platform calls them out on the table (see
Heather Armstrong aka @Dooce and Maytag). Poor policies and poorer customer service for regular folks don't matter, but when a person with a following complains about something, it's "How high would you like me to jump?"
While I adore Southwest, there's a big #fail around this one.
Update 6:42 p.m. - Southwest finally talks to Kevin on the phone, and then
blogs about their conversation with him. Then he
replies saying, in essence, "All I wanted you to do was say you didn't bounce me because I'm fat to fly." And...they didn't.
(* In full disclosure, I should say that I think my company does a
fantastic job with our SM stuff.)
