Silent Bob Won't Shut Up!

You may have heard in the news a couple weeks ago the hullabaloo about Kevin Smith (if you don't know who he is, he's "silent bob" in the movie "Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back" and the director of many movies like "Clerks") being ejected from a Southwest flight. Why? Because he was too fat!

While this might still have gotten attention before the age of Twitter, it, of course, blew up even more quickly, as Smith tweeted the story instantaneously on his Twitter account.

According to Smith's blog, Twitter account and Podcast, he was asked to leave the plane, which was full, for safety reasons because he took up too much room. While he admitted that he is fat, he said he hadn't reached the point yet where two seats were required (even though he usually buys two seats on Southwest). Apparently, it is a judgement call on the shoulders of Southwest staff as to whether or not a person is too fat based on if they can comfortably lower the arm rest.

Why I like this story is because usually I harp on companies for not being social media savvy enough to be aware of what is going on online and responding quickly enough. However, here we've got Southwest Airlines, who's been in the social media game for quite a while and is VERY savvy. They're all over Twitter and have their famous Nuts About Southwest blog.

Amazingly Southwest took a lot of heat for this. In reviewing their response, I would give them a 9 out of 10 for how well they handled this. Smith did not see it this way, of course.

Southwest's Twitter team responded very quickly to Smith's tweets, apologizing that he had a problem immediately and asking him to DM them some contact info so they could try to help. That is EXACTLY what you want to do. Publicly apologize for any bad experience to show you care and you're listening and then take the issue off Twitter if you can and get it to a one-on-one interaction. They personally called Smith multiple times to try to resolve the issue.

The only negative I could find was their initial blog posts, which had a little bit of a defensive tone. Check out their first blog post on the topic: Not So Silent Bob. Just the title alone is a tad belittling. I always advise clients not to get into a public debate. And Southwest even acknowledges that they'd prefer to work this out directly with Smith, but because the public inevitably got involved in this, they felt they owed an explanation.

This is a case where I think Twitter gave Smith more power perhaps due to his follower numbers than was warranted and many people only chose to watch his side of the story. And I kind of think Smith enjoyed all the hype and was looking for a reason NOT to be satisfied with Southwest's response. He even notes in his blog that his real issue was that he wanted Southwest to say he's not too fat to fly. Sounds like a self-esteem issue to me :), not a customer service issue.

This also spun out of control as it made a great headline - Too Fat to Fly - so the media took it and ran, giving it even more legs.

I give Southwest an overall kudos, as they are one of the first companies I've seen who faced a social media PR disaster and handled it appropriately.

What did you think of this whole fiasco? Did you see it on Twitter as it unfolded?

About Lyn Mettler
Lyn is the mother of two young boys, a social media nerd and the founder of Step Ahead Inc., a company which combines the best of traditional public relations with social media campaigns to maximize visibility for clients both online and off. She is the social media featured blogger for TwitterMoms.com and also blogs regularly on her company Web site. Follow her on Twitter at @webprgirl.

Tags: kevin, smith, southwest, tmfc, tmmoney&business, twitter

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Comment by Lyn Mettler on March 6, 2010 at 5:34pm: I have not listened to the Podcast and I agree if he could put the armrests down then clearly it does not violate their rules.

Comment by Rain Blanken on March 6, 2010 at 4:34pm: I listened to Keven Smith's 'Smodcast' about the whole event. I think that anyone interested in the story should listen to his full account of what happened. If he could put the arm rests down and buckle, there should not have been a problem. If someone were to embarrass me in such a way, I'd be shouting it from the rooftops, too!

Comment by Donna DiCorcia-Davis on March 3, 2010 at 9:12am: It was sort of humiliating what SouthWest did to him. I mean he was already seated and so were the people around him. I think they did single him out because he was silent bob.