Child "schools" Boeing

They say there is power in numbers.

The New York Times reported on May 10, 2010 that an eight year old boy mailed his drawing of an airplane design to Boeing corporation in the hopes that they would consider it and create it. Instead, the child received a form letter saying that Boeing does not accept unsolicited ideas because the time, cost, and risk involved in paying attention to them aren't worth the benefit gained. Basically, this sent the message that they are too large a corporation to pay attention to some child's drawing and they responded with their one-size-fits-all formal letter that clearly is not a proper response to a child. The child's father happened to be a CEO of an advertising agency that uses crowdsourcing and decided to post the incident on his Twitter and blog. After feeling the pressure from public perception of the incident, Boeing decided to give a sweeter response to the child and decided that they would find a new way to respond to children.

I think that Boeing's response was a bit harsh and considering that effective marketing starts with consumer satisfaction it is important that they realize their adult consumer can be dissatisfied by how their child is treated. And if that dissatisfaction turns into negative word-of-mouth that spreads like wildfire over the internet it can tarnish the way the corporation is viewed. Especially if the one spreading the negative word-of-mouth is the CEO of an ad agency that uses crowdsourcing.


However, I do not think this incident was such a big deal and I don't think that it could have had the potential to keep the public from flying on Boeing airplanes. The only other option I'm aware of is Airbus and I doubt people would go through the effort to not fly on a Boeing airplane just because of a little boy not receiving a more "sweet" response.

Having said that I think Boeing made the smart move and cleaned up the problem. After all, it doesn't take that much effort to call the young boy, e-mail the father, and create a new form letter to reply to children with. And since most unsolicited mail is from adults it wouldn't be so inconvenient to have an employee occasionally use a child form letter.

The lesson learned from this is the importance of using social media by a corporation and not underestimating the power of crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is outsourcing a task usually performed by one person by gathering a large crowd of people through an open call. To learn more about crowdsourcing I recommend visiting the blog http://crowdsourcing.typepad.com/. The child's father used his Twitter account and blog to crowdsource which is how eventually a Boeing employee overseeing their Twitter account found out about the incident. I find it very exciting how social media can allow crowdsourcing to put corporations in check and remind them that their ultimate interest is in the consumer.

This whole story definitely brought more attention to the father's ad agency and this shows the importance of using social media to enhance public perception. Not only did the father get payback from Boeing he also got the word out about his agency and looked like a savior and a good father in the process. That equals positive public perception of him and his agency.

I know firsthand what a great tool social media can be to get a response from someone in a company. I once tried sending a letter to the editor in chief of Russian Vogue and never got a reply because I believed her assistant didn't feel it was important enough and discarded it or just didn't forward it. That angered me since I had taken the effort to write a nice letter and hoped to get some kind of response. But eventually I found out she had a facebook and sent the same letter as a message and got not only a reply to my original letter but a reply too when I asked for career advice. So although somewhat different to the Boeing case I think social media can be a way to get a response from someone in a company and surpass the horrible bureaucracy of corporations.

-Alex G