Two Lessons From the Kevin Smith Controversy

Last week's incident involving director popular indie director Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines (for those too absorbed by the Winter Olympics to notice: Smith bought two seats to accommodate his girth, switched to another flight that had only one spare seat available, and was asked to disembark in accordance with the airline's policy) reinforces a couple of arguments we have made several times before.

The first (as Caroline McCarthy argues here) is that it is no longer possible to separate public relations from customer service. If you are charged with managing an organization's reputation and you don't have responsibility for customer service, you simply cannot do your job.

The second is that in the social media age, public relations is everyone's job, and employees at every level of the organization--particularly those who interact with members of the public--have to be trained as ambassadors for the company and its reputation.

Having said that, I'm not entirely convinced that Southwest is wrong on the substantive issue here, and I certainly don't believe that Kevin Smith is entitled to receive better treatment just because he's a celebrity, a blogger, and has a large Twitter following.

The rise of social media will clearly make controversial policies even more controversial; but if companies believe those policies are fair--and I think Southwest can make a strong case for this one--they need to be prepared to defend them.