PR Analysis : US Airways tweet mistake worth millions

The infamous naked woman and the toy plane made its comeback this week thanks to US Airways, and what's even more surprising, is that it's done some good.

Now, the image in question was completely inappropriate given that has been circulating on Twitter for weeks, but, the result of the tweet, has been very well received.

Today, there are thousands of news articles, blogs, opinion articles and hilarious spoofs of this incident that have actually brought the airline a media campaign worth several million dollars. The opinion right now would be something along the lines "You failed but it's ok because we are now laughing and it's really entertaining."

While the tweet in question could be considered a catastrophic failure from the social media team, that mistake has led to some lighthearted support despite being totally inappropriate.

What some might consider PR disaster has actually turned into a parody, and what's good about parody is that it escalates the brand discussion. US Airways could have paid $5 million in sponsored tweets, ads, video pre-rolls and never got near the attention that they are getting right now.

Granted, we shouldn't be praising this epic failure, but given that it's become such a trend, surely companies should be looking at this from a lighter side, and seeing how they can make their branding more fun, their tweets more engaging, and start interacting with people. That's what sells, although next time, do it more tastefully!