Not positive about what is actually being marketing here and not sure that anything needs to be.  I like the spin off to the popularityof projection art & marketing that's become popular in some of the major cities. 

Whatever it is, it catches my attention and I love the work involved in creating the novelty.  ENJOY!

***UPDATE***

Smith updates his blog tonight after more words with Southwest.  Seems like he really just wants them to tell everyone that there was more to him getting kicked off then his weight nad that he wasn't too fat to fly.  I've gotta go with him on this one.  He really just wants to save face and for Southwest to say that he isn't so obese that he would need two seats.  Personally, I've sat next to people way larger than him on Southwet flights, but that is neither here or there.  This adds some perspective to the story.

Kevin Smith gets kicked off of a Southwest Airlines flight after being seated due to being too big for his seat and uses Twitter as a Machine gun to let loose his anger on the Southwest brand.  Southwest catches the message fast and offers Smith a $100 voucher and an apology and even writes a blog on the subject.  Smith doesn't take the apology very well.  If you want more details check out a couple of my friends articles on the story.  One by Jason Harper at Locker Parnter and then my buddy Will Gregory's take on it.  I'm going to break it down a bit and then give you my take.

Kevin Smith

I've followed him through his entire career and follow him now mostly through twitter and his podcast.  He has a very loyal and savvy following and is known to be very blunt and honest about all aspects of his life.  Smith was embarrased for being a celebrity that had to walk off a plane in front of the other passangers for being too fat (this is granted).  His embarrasment soon turns to anger and he flexes his very large social media muscle by reaching out to his over 1.6million followers.  This catches the attention of every news provider on the wire and this thing quickly becomes a very large story for Kevin Smith and Southwest's brand.

Southwest Airlines

Southwest is absolutely no stranger to social media.  In fact, I would put them on a very short list of companies that "get it".  Catch an interview with Paula Berg, emerging media manager at Soutwest on a recent, "The Brand Show"  podcast.  I'm a big fan of Southwest's brand and their simple message to give people the best price on airline travel.  Great leadership and a breath of fresh air in the struggling industry.  Southwest acted as if it would for anyone that has a valid complaint, catches the KS tweets and offers an apology as well as a $100 voucher to boot. 

So what happened?  I thought social media fixes everything???

We're all still learning here and what's most refreshing is that even the smartest of people using these new tactics to listen and and interact with their customer are learning too.  Southwest followed all the rules and did everything they were supposed too and I still think they got burnt on this one. 

What could they have done differently?

I think they actually acted too fast on this.  They treated it like they would a normal customer and not Kevin Smith.   A very upset celebrity customer that's directly connected to 1.6 million potential customers is important to me as a marketing manager!  It's actually so damn important that I would have a special red phone installed in my house that would wake me up anytime something like this happened.  I think that they missed a huge opportunity here.  I'm not saying that they kiss Kevin's ass or give him a golden ticket, but if they new his personality and brand better, they could have easily made this an outcome where everyone was happy.  I'm sure Smith wouldn't have minded the opportunity for some extra publicity with his new movie coming out this week!

The blog wasn't really cool either.  This story brings a lot of attention to Southwest's very shadowy policies on whether someone is too fat to sit on a plane.  It's also a very embarrasing ordeal to one of their customers.  I may have taken it a little more seriously.

Hindsight is 20/20 folks and what's done is done!  I'm still a fan of both KS & SW and hope that they can figure their differences out, but if they don't, I'm sure I'll enjoy that just as much.

Looks like this video has been out there since last summer, so I'm pretty slow to find this but I thought it was worth a post.

It's quick, it's simple and an entertaining way to show our modern relationships with brands in our daily lives.

Great work by an agency out of Atlanta, 22squared.

A lot of folks are talking about bringing in Community Managers these days.  Who else is going to answer all those annoying questions on the boards and keep up the witty banter on your Facebook & Twitter? (I kid) 

Honestly, who is the best person for the job?  You want someone that can  write fast, so do you get yourself an out of work journalist on the cheap?  Then again, You need someone with some heavy duty communication and relationship building skills though.  Maybe a young up and coming PR pro?  You could always hire within and give that new whiz kid in the office a shot. after all, he seems to glow with your brand's personality and swagger and does well with the corporate high ups.  Of course a lot of this depends on your brand and your product.

This is the best part of a position that hasn't competely emerged yet.  Since there isn't and understood "right" answer yet, it allows people to get messy and throw ideas around.  In the issue of community building, I find myself looking towards the video gamers and the people who make said games.  These communities have been around for a while as have the mass chat boards, fan clubs, and community events including them.  This gives them a bit of a rare head start as far as relationships with communities go.

More specifically, I have been looking at Capcom, the maker of the world famous Street Fighter & Mega Man franchises.  Both games hold a special place in the hearts in most of us that grew up as Nintendo kids.  These legendary series' are still alive today and as you can imagine have a powerful community surrounding them both in Japan as well as the US.

How did Capcom fill their need for a Community Manager in the States?  They hired Seth Killian.  Seth's background is interesting, but nothing out of the ordinary. Working at a university in the physics dept., working in publishing with books on fascinating topics such as gender relations from 1872-1874, and even a German to English translator.  Nothing screams Community Manager for a video game company yet huh?

thanks G4 for the photo of Seth in front of this SFIV banner

Seth's occupational background might not sing the song, but that's not how he got his current gig.  What I've left out is Seth's passion for the arcade fighter Street Fighter 2.  The game that re-invented the American arcade and even put out one of the worst big budget movies starring Jean Claude Van Damme in a time when that was pretty kick ass.

Years before he started working for Capcom Seth spent years helping create the American Street Fighter 2 community by helping host and setup the fan made and very popular EVO Championship Series of tournaments which became famous for it's gathering of gamers from accross the globe.  That and Seth is really freaking good at the game itself.  Many would argue that the Japanese gamers didn't even take Americans seriously until Seth came around.  The guy is so good that they named a character in the recent Street Fighter IV game after him.  Yeah, I said it.  Not just a character but the final and impossibly difficult to beat final boss of the game. 

When Capcom was looking for someone to bring their community together under the brand's own website, they looked within the community itself and hired one of their leaders.

  By doing this, they took advantage of one of difficult ingredients of a successful Community Manager.  Trust!  Seth was already trusted by the community.  By bringing him into this position, Capcom had just made a promise to the community.  Capcom knew that since Killian was already a trusted part of the community, that he was bound by that trust to listen and speak for the community even though he was now getting a paycheck.  This can get tricky, but in Capcom's world, it seems to have been a success.

Seth's also highly respected within Capcom (if that wasn't evident by the character naming thing).  Capcom understands that his position isn't just a community baby sitter, but a funnel of information from the most important source, the gamers and fans themselves.  He is able to speak to the devlopers themselves to share the community's messages regarding hiccups in the game, overpowered or underpowered characters or parts of the game that well well or ill recieved.  It's this mutual respect and understanding that makes things run so well.

The power of the community isn't just in getting them to buy into the next game, but better judging what that next game should be or even fixing their existing product and making it better. 

Capcom and other gaming companies are in a very unique position in that their communities are already so large and so vocal.  However, with the the speed of which communities are beginning to form with the help of social media juice, it's not a leap to figure that it won't take long for other companies to catch up.

Let me know if you've had any experience with Community Managers.  Is Seth's story a rare one?  What qualities have I missed?  Feel free to leave comments and thanks for reading.

Found This pic of a McDonalds Guerrilla ad in Canada over at Ads of the World.

Just shows that marketing can be remarkable outside of a computer monitor.  I appreciate advertising that upsets the usual walk to work with something that makes you smile. 

It's smart, simple and gives people something to talk about.  Just gotta make sure that it doesn't stay up long enough to melt into the background again.

Nice work!