The United Breaks Guitars saga continues with the launch of the second song. The first went viral almost immediately, logging more than 5 million (!!) views on YouTube thanks to a shared consumer desire to punish United Airlines for its indifferent, actually let’s say arrogant, customer service.

Our pals at Thinkwell Research did some polling in Nova Scotia and found that 67 percent of the province’s population had heard something about the video. That is staggering, even in the Sons of Maxwell’s home province. Nearly 40 percent of those surveyed said that the video left them with a more negative impression of United Airlines. Those who had seen the video were even more pissed off, with nearly 60 percent left with a negative impression of the airline.

Check the second clip:

Apparently BMW is taking over home pages…NYTimes.com and MSN.com to be specific.

Users arriving at these sites earlier this week were treated to a screen blackout, followed by…

“comedian Brian Unger telling viewers that “Americans are always finding ways to be more responsible,” before a constellation of energy-efficient light bulbs illuminates a scene showing him standing between the 335d and X5 diesel. As part of the campaign, BMW is offering a $4500 “eco credit,” or rebate, on the two cars through August 31.”

The ad links directly to one of two 30 second TV spots.

BMW is apparently pleased with the response, however the Twittosphere…not so much.

“Big thumbs down to @nytimes for running a BMW ad which darkens the screen, with no apparent/easy way to disable the ad,” complained lx69 in one tweet. “That BMW ad on the NYTimes.com home page? Super-annoying,” wrote lseward, in another.”

Read the article I’ve quoted from.

There are 36 more of these…here.

We’ve just uploaded an entry into a little design contest.

The contest asks creative types to develop a cover for Media Magazine’s upcoming “Future of Media” issue, which will be guest-edited by Alex Bogusky.

You can check out the entries here. 

Ours is entry #268, entitled “Who’s herding now?”  Here’s the rationale behind it:
The future of media will not be about the delivery mechanisms, but the people pushing it out, and the curators we trust to assemble and syndicate that content. They will feed the masses.

Our lovely green field represents the multitude of content developers and topics, the cute sheep represent us – the consuming public, and the sheep-herding YouTube video (the bit.ly link in Alex’s tweet) is about the folks curating the content on our behalf. Alex? He’s all three.

Anyhow, if you feel like visiting the site and “hearting” our design, that would be much appreciated. Otherwise, cross your fingers for us.

BBDO created the above ad for Pepsi, allowing transit customers to plug in and hear exclusive audio tracks.

The other day I was in the Bloor subway station and saw another series of posters that was very fun - a photo of a group of people, each with a headphone jack in the middle of their mouths - inviting people to plug in to hear what they had to say.

Filmmaker John Hughes - unparalleled chronicler of teenage angst - has died. Everyone will be talking about the Breakfast Club, but i was always a fan of Weird Science. Check the montage:

Kurt Cobain weeps…but this is pretty funny.

Update #3 on the United Airlines Breaks Guitars Fiasco. In the face of a huge online backlash, United will donate $3,000 to the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz for music education for kids.

Yeah, that should definitely be tagged as too little, too late after 500,000 YouTube views and coverage on CNN.

Word is that the Sons of Maxwell will play their tune on the Letterman Show.

Hey United - the Web moves fast. You should move faster.

FOLLOW UP: The Sons of Maxwell are pretty nice, gentle guys. But don’t piss them off. The “United Breaks Guitars” tune created because of a horrible experience with United Airlines has gone global. Check it:

As of Wednesday evening, that song, “United Breaks Guitars,” was the most popular music video on YouTube with about 150,000 views, and to his shock, his phone rang and rang and rang all day, with calls from across the continent.

What started off as a lark has turned into far more exposure than Carroll has ever had with his band Sons of Maxwell, the kind of publicity he could never afford to buy, he said in an interview.

See the rest at CTV.

Lesson for businesses - in the social media world, it only takes one pissed off customer to do some serious damage. And hey United, pay for the damn guitar you broke.

Here’s a great cautionary tale on the power of online word-of-mouth. The excellent - yet only Halifamous - band Sons of Maxwell had a guitar broken by United Airlines which, being a big bad airline, did nothing about it. But revenge sounds good. Check out this clip - over 130,000 other people have. That’s a huge and growing number of negative brand impressions for one guitar. Rock on.