Time Thief: Justin Bieber late concert

When we have a problem we don’t want to hear how great everything else is.

 

The Problem

The Justin Bieber evening concert in London was reported as starting two hours late. The media quoted the disappointment of concert attendees. It was significant that the main audience for this concert was 13 year old girls who needed to go to school the next morning. Many were there with their mothers.

The response

Apparently Justin Bieber didn’t acknowledge the delay or apologize for it at the concert. He responded to the news headlines the next day. He meekly apologized, then claimed that he was only 40 minutes late and that it was a technical problem. That suggests that his clock or expectations was different from his audience's. Big difference between 40 minutes and 2 hours!  It was a technical problem. Was that an explanation or an excuse?

Then he added in another tweet that he wasn’t OK with people exaggerating. It turns out that the delay was only 1 hour and 54 minutes – not quite a full two hours – but hardly 40 minutes. Who exaggerated and who lied?

Then Bieber added, “It was a great show”. No one disputed that but he seemed to feel that eclipsed the issue of time.

The audience expected “Great”. They didn’t expect to have their time abused.

If your defense is that the show was great you only delivered part of the expectations.

How to Fix the problem?

You can’t give the audience back the time you wasted. You might be able to get them to feel better about it. The apology – as lame as it appeared was a start. What else could Justin Bieber do?

Refunds is one way to mitigate broken promises. But that is not creative. Some other possibilities might be to donate proceeds from that late concert to a local charity, hold another concert for charity, and/or make some appearances at local community events.

It might hurt for Bieber to give up some money or time – but that’s exactly what his abused fans did for him.

George Torok Keynote Marketing Speaker Co-author of Secrets of Power Marketing Get your free copy of "50 Power Marketing Ideas" Power Marketing on FaceBook Marketing Zoo on Twitter