Twenty years ago, when a customer had a bad experience and decided to complain, he told a few friends and that was that. Today, a customer can share a bad experience with millions of people instantly through blogs, Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools. And when that customer happens to be NBC Parks and Recreation star Aziz Ansari, people listen.
Ansari went to the AMC Theater in Burbank on May 11 to see Star Trek: The IMAX Experience. He sent out a tweet that night claiming he was charged an extra $5 for a slightly bigger screen and not the full IMAX experience. Ansari then wrote a blog post asking readers to boycott fake IMAX experiences at Regal and AMC Theaters.
Slashfilm made a post on Digital IMAX supporting Ansari. CHUD and New York Magazine followed suit. Within hours, Ansari tweeted that he also had the support of Deadline Hollywood, Fark, Buzzfeed, Rotten Tomatoes, Onion AV Club, CinemaBlend, Collider and more. His story made the Digg homepage with 2435 Diggs.
Richard Gelfond, CEO of IMAX, defended IMAX against Ansari’s rant and other blogs covering the issue. Though he seemed to brush off Ansari’s comments, saying, “The overwhelming majority of comments on that guy’s blog this morning, more than 90% of them, are vehemently disagreeing with him. And consumers are confirming this with their continued purchases of tickets.” Ansari blogged a response, asking others to share their experiences online.
How much impact can one person have? Check out the trend chart below measuring online chatter. Positive sentiment around IMAX was extremely high the week leading up to Ansari’s rant, with more than 80% positive chatter. Positivity has gone down sharply to 60% over the past two days, with negativity shooting up from less than 10% to nearly 40% of IMAX posts.
We also analyzed keywords around the word IMAX over the last few days. The word fake appeared in 8% and Ansari appeared in 5% of posts. Will the chatter lead to a decrease in customers? How do you think IMAX should respond? Is your brand prepared to handle the power customers have today?




May 13, 2009
People still don’t evaluate the power of buzz..I could talk about many “accidents” like the one you showed us. As usual, the best way to answer him could have been: 1) we received your message, 2) thanks to showed us your point of view; 3) we’ll answer you soon; then if he was wrong, they had to explain him why, but if he got the reason, they had to apologies and then they had to try to resolve the situation. (sorry for my E.)