Personal Branding in the Age of Social Media: Dave Carroll at TEDxHoboken

[Music] hi there if you in July of 2009 had googled United Airlines the third-highest search result would have been United breaks guitars and why is that remarkable well it's remarkable because I'm a regular guy just like you could I get a show of hands in the audience of who here has had a bad airline experience or knows somebody who has well that means that we have something in common and that relatability has fueled one of the most successful customer service complaints in history I'm told if you have a video and you post it to YouTube and it does something outstanding in a given month they award it what they call honors and in July of 2009 United breaks guitars had a lot of honors it was the number one most watched music video in the world for the whole month of July thank you but more than that I thought this is more interesting as it was the number six most watched video of any kind in the world for the whole month of July so it had become more than just a music story to become a social statement and since then four hundred books have been written to talk about United breaks guitars in one way or another the highest levels of Education Harvard does an annual case study on this and cooler than that there's a grade one class in Pennsylvania who followed me for a year to talk about the power one person to make a change with not a lot of money but some passion and the coolest thing that's ever happened to me in my life I was a $1,000 question on the game show Jeopardy so I'm going to talk about the video quite a bit for this presentation so maybe we can watch some of it this is called United breaks guitars blue United Airlines on my way to Nebraska the plane departed Halifax connecting in Chicago's O'Hare while on the ground the passengers if from the seat behind me my god Arzo there [Music] I exchange to look best described is Terror at the action on the tarmac and knowing who's dials these would be [Music] so before I left Chicago alerted three employees who show complete indifference towards me you broke my tailor time unite you are you broke you should fix it you're lying just a minute I should have flown with someone else my car [Music] cuz United breaks guitars so that's in an embrace guitar thank you and so how did all this begin well back on March 31st 2008 I was flying with my brother Don and our band sons of maxwell we were going from halifax ultimately to nebraska and we stopped in chicago to deplane and catch her connector and i'm sitting near the back of the plane and across from me was my bass player and friend mike hilts and behind him was a woman who didn't know we were musicians but she looked out the window and felt compelled to say oh my god they're throwing guitars outside right that's what I did and I tried to get the flight attendant to take some interest and she wouldn't and I was directed outside the plane and the lead agent wouldn't take any interest she disappeared into the airport and just inside O'Hare there was a woman about to make a phone call at the wicket and I walked up to her and I interrupted her and I said excuse me they're throwing our guitars outside and we'd like someone to do something about this and she paused long enough to say but hon that's why you signed the waiver and she started and that's right so it wasn't bad enough that our guitars were being thrown around an international airport I just been rejected by three women in five minutes well it turned out that my $3500 Taylor guitar which I bought when I didn't have $3500 was really badly damaged and I tried to get United to take some responsibility for that for nearly nine months and I called all the 1-800 numbers direct to India I was online I went back to the phones I talked to people all over the place and in every case people either didn't want to help or they weren't empowered to help and I was stuck in this tumultuous customer service maze that we've all been in many times and so eventually after all this time I ended up meeting a woman customer service rep from Chicago and we had a series of email exchanges and at the end of the day she said mister Carol we're not responsible for the damage to your guitar because you didn't open up a claim within 24 hours and so I was frustrated and I just started typing right back to her and I said if I were a lawyer I might sue United Airlines but I'm not I'm a musician and I have other tools at my disposal and so without thinking I said I'm going to make three songs and make three videos about my experience with United Airlines and I'm going to post them to YouTube and I'm going to try and get 1 million hits in one year with all three videos combined I said you don't need to respond to me as you promise that you won't I will keep you tabbed on the progress and when that first video is done I'll let you know so that we can watch it together we can get to a million that much quicker and that's exactly what I did and in June seven months later in June of 2009 I went to the Waverly fire hall where I'd been a volunteer firefighter for five years and thanks to my friends in the music business and who helped make the recording and my friends in the film business who helped make the video and all the people who came together for a hundred and fifty dollars I was able to make this first video that has since been seen now thirteen point two million views and a hundred and fifty million people in the world are now familiar with this story and so we we shot the video it was great I had it in my hands on July 1st I posted it on July 6 my entire social media strategy was just to put it up on YouTube and on Monday July 6th at 11:30 p.m. I posted it online and I went to bed 30 minutes later and I had six hits and I thought all six were mine right because I was going to watch this a million times if I needed to but fortunately I didn't have to because the next morning I had 300 hits and I had 5,000 hits by lunchtime and 25,000 hits by dinnertime and the next morning it officially started a media frenzy by Friday of that week it hit a million and in those early days it was crazy you couldn't keep up with the media I was doing interviews from 7 a.m. till like 11:00 p.m. and then I would go to bed for two hours and I would wake up at 2:00 in the morning and I would do the European media circuit and so it was really exhausting and it was exhilarating all at the same time and it was just it was about building a brand and doing incredible things unfortunately I had a nice group of people to support me and I discovered very early in those early media days that depending on who you were if you if depending on the media source that covered it you might be more or less interested in my story so for instance when I was in Rolling Stone my musician friends were like dude it's rolling stop for me being on the situation room with wolf blitzer that was kind of the cool thing because there was Wolf Blitzer declaring to the international community that this wasn't just a story it's a situation there were my friends on the situation roll wall screens and they were rocking out and and Wolf Blitzer was rocking out I caught him doing this and they put our story between one in the Pope and Barack Obama so I did all these interviews hundreds of interviews over the next few months six months later I got a call from ABC Television and they asked me if I wanted to go on the view with Whoopi Goldberg in the ladies and so before I even said yes to them I called my mom because that's her favorite show right so I called my mom on the phone I said Mike I got big news I'm going to be on the view next week and she's never at a loss for words but there was dead silence and then holy this turned my mother into a potty mode right and my dad saying that's great well about a week later I get a call from Reader's Digest and I do a Reader's Digest interview and I phone home and I'm talking to my mom about some other things and I said mentioned too that I did a Reader's Digest interview she's like neat I'll tell him for sure my dad he calls back and he doesn't like the telephone but he calls me back as excited as I've ever heard him and he's like son Reader's Digest this is huge this is going to help your CD sales and proud of it so the story went far and wide and it changed my life instantly but it didn't just change my career it started to have ripples in across the world in social media and customer service and in branding and that's kind of what I want to talk to you today about is branding and specifically personal branding because we all have a brand and we tend to maybe think traditionally in terms of branding as big companies like coca-cola with a great logo and a cool catchphrase but personal branding is becoming more important today because like your personal brand unlike a company's brand it's really nothing more than the some of the conversations being had about it your brand is nothing more than the some of the conversations being had about it and so if you want to enhance your personal brand today and you combine social media with that you can do some incredible things if you take it seriously and in my case like I said I had a lot of fun and a lot of experience a lot of people helping me out and I think with all the academic study they'll both Brandin I think I learned everything I need to know about branding from my family United breaks guitars song to the trilogy is up there the second song united break cigar song - is my favorite for a few reasons it had a hundred people involved it was right on the heels being shot in August of 2009 of the first video and my wife was in there my grandmother 88 years old my dad my son was in there and it was a really great day and there's this scene it's a blooper at the end that I really like that the camera from a high angle was looking down and on this field everyone was in the scene in the frame and they said from the megaphone up top everybody has to get out of the frame we have one shot to get this right and we want everyone out to leave Dave on the field by himself to put his guitar down and walk off the field and everyone got that message just about everyone got out of the frame I put my guitar down it went up to stand to walk away and I saw two people still there and it was my grandmother and the woman holding her up because my grandmother didn't listen and she missed the memo that she was supposed to leave the field so on this video you see me walking up to her and I'm trying to whisk her off the field as fast as I possibly can and she's British and the British are never wrong and they can articulate that and so she was saying where are we going no one told me anything all right so we got off the field two weeks later we launched the video and it gets popular really quick again not like the first one but it was still there was a spike in interest and I'm driving in my car one day and I get a call and you never knew who was going to call and this time it was from a casting director in Halifax and she said Olympia Dukakis oscar-winning actress has come into town and she's shooting a feature film here in Halifax and we're looking for actors so I'm overcome I had to pull the car over to collect myself I'm thinking I'm going to be in an Olympia Dukakis movie and she says we want to know if your grandmother's available yeah I said we like her working video too so I went home and I convinced my grandmother and she did it in the afternoon of one day in August she went and she was the irrepressible Sleeping Lady in bed to in an Olympia Dukakis movie she made 160 bucks in four hours and she came home she donated it to charity and then she said I'm retiring from acting David I like to keep a low profile but not long after that though my grandmother was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and they gave her nine months to live and she exceeded that she leave lived a full year and I learned a lot from my grandmother growing up but what I think I learned most was how to die with dignity because she died with tremendous dignity she didn't want to take any medication she accepted the fate and the diagnosis she never complained and you know she didn't want to die in the hospital and fortunately she didn't have to because she got to die one morning in her bed at my parents house and it wasn't just any bed it was her her wrought iron bed that reminded her of being a little girl back in England and the reason I think that's relevant today is because you might think as a musician the coolest thing the highest takeaway for me would be having the number one music video in the world for a whole month but it's not it's not even close for me it's having this memory of my grandmother in acting silly and full of life in a video that I can introduce to her great grandsons my two young sons and it reminded me that through this whole experience that my brand your brand our platforms they all arrest upon the stories of other people our brands today are co-created and that means that you know I'm not here because I did something amazing something amazing happened that I may have given some momentum to but it was really created by a whole bunch of people and so what does it mean when I say your platform rests upon the stories of other people for me it means that I feel that I now have a sense of responsibility to help other people understand that their voice matters and that they have a story worth telling so if you feel that you're isolated or silenced or alone I want you to know that you're none of those three I want you to know that if you show up with some passion creativity and the right intention that the right people will always show up at exactly the right time to help you achieve your goals and I want you to know that there's liberation in knowing that when you're on purpose that your greatest successes will never ever feel like work because you're never going to have to shoulder more than a portion of the load yourself and so now I spend my time in the last few years I've kind of repurposed my life and I try and improve the world one experience at a time and I've decided that I can do that with my guitar as a musician or with my book or when I speak around the world or with any of the three internet startups that I'm I'm now involved with with the services we offer and because I believe our brands are co-created and we have a responsibility to other people that's why I do that sort of thing and through this experience and understanding all of that I now I'm able to view my experience from a position of deep gratitude because I get re-energized every time I tell the story I get to re-experience the gratitude for all the people who helped me make it and who maybe in this room who watched the video who have given me this platform that I'm so happy to have and it always leads me back to what I think is the number one reason why United breaks guitars was so successful and why it should matter to you and I think the reason is simply this that we're connected I believe you and I and everyone in the world are fundamentally connected with one another and it's not just something that we say as an affirmation to pump ourselves up I believe that we're fundamentally connected and it changes everything about the way I see the world and the world around me they say social media Connexus I don't think it does I think social media is a tool that allows us to experience the connection that already exists and so I hope that when people hear my story going forward that they will move away from that knee-jerk reaction to say this is the classic David and Goliath tale of a battle and move towards what I think is the higher lesson which is that if you're willing to peel back the layers and share yourself with other people if you're willing to allow yourself to become vulnerable enough that you're going to make deep connections with other people and in that connected space and that space that's where all the magic happens that's where it all happens and so I'll ask you this question what are your strengths what passions do you possess and how can you use your creativity to tell your story and build your brand in a way that will help other people in the world we're connected you are powerful know that and then ask yourself what will I do to make a difference thank you [Applause] [Music] you you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 70,759

Rating: 4.8473768 out of 5

Keywords: ted, English, United States, ted x, ted talks, Dave Carroll, Hoboken, United Breaks Guitars, tedx talk, ted talk, tedx talks, TEDx, tedx, Elizabeth Barry, TEDxHoboken

Id: u-R-TeGMufA

Length: 16min 59sec (1019 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 07 2013