A Valuable Example in New Media PR – Thanks to Media Pro, Kevin Smith

For anyone who works in public relations, the Kevin Smith/Southwest Airlines situation is well-worth studying to learn how to properly handle crisis communications in the social media playground.

For those who are able to be near me, they hear me all the time say that the PR methods I used to follow are no longer applicable. That former business model is over and we’ve entered a new wide frontier where our learning is often played out in the public.

Yes, there are some same principles of crisis communications that are applicable to handling bad press in new media.  For instance, the first rule of thumb – being ahead of the story does indeed always stand. But, since the new tools are immediate, that rule is often not able to be utilized.

Thus, there is so much to learn from this situation which some media have labeled “Fatgate.”

Kevin Smith Knows How to Communicate

In a nutshell, Kevin Smith, the director and writer of such cult-classics as “Clerks” and “Dogma,” boarded a Southwest flight taking off from Oakland headed for Burbank on Saturday, Feb. 13.  Since he was loaded on a “stand by” basis, he was unable to purchase a secondary seat, which he normally does and after boarding, he for some reason was wrongly ejected off the plane by the pilot citing that he was a “safety risk.”

Smith, a savvy promoter and communicator, immediately tweeted about the situation and his outrage against the action.  Keep in mind, Smith (twitter name @ThatKevinSmith) has over 1.6 million fellow twitterers that follow him.  So his words were heard instantly.

Since Saturday, Smith and Southwest (SWA) have been going back and forth about the situation. Each have blogged extensively about it and it’s become quite the mess, but it’s an excellent lesson for us PR professionals in how to handle a bad situation from an influencer.

I highly recommend you read Kevin Smith’s account of Southwest’s apology and compare that to what Southwest Airlines has posted on its blog about the situation.  You can also follow their twitter feeds, Southwest is at @Southwest Air.  And to add more salt to Southwest Airlines wound, Smith has a video podcast and so he’s been using that platform to tell his story to his community as well as the world.

There are so many good lessons to take away from this situation, which Smith hopes is over. I could go on and on about this, but to keep this post brief, I’ll hit on some topline PR points.

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