Not the intended outcome of Southwest’s social media strategy.

Southwest Airlines has made a concerted effort to embrace online social media. They blog. They tweet. They’ve garnered admiration for their success in establishing and extending their brand through direct online interaction with customers.

And then, Southwest threw Kevin Smith off one of their flights for violating their “Customers of Size” policy. Except that he wasn’t violating it, actually (he could fit comfortably in the seat with the armrests down) … and they were rude to him, and they fat-shamed a fellow flier on the replacement flight he booked, and then there’s the small matter of Kevin Smith being a film director famed for his internet savvy, and his lack of filter.

Did I mention that he has 1,656,564 Twitter followers as of today? And that Smith broadcast his thoughts about this situation as it was happening?

All this after he was recognized by one of the flight crew. They should have known better.

The response from Southwest has been to restate that Smith was in violation of the policy, and that they’ve apologized. 600+ blog comments tell me that this response was probably inadequate.

The moral, if there is one (beyond the fact that SWA needs to tell its employees to adhere more strictly to the letter of their “Customers of Size” policy), is that when you reach out to your customers online, you are personalizing your interactions with your customers. And when you have a personal interaction with a customer, you can’t switch to sounding like a stubbornly illogical automaton (in this case, one that recites corporate policy boilerplate) without the customer reacting badly.

Southwest now has to deal with not only the enmity of millions of people on Twitter, but with one of the most enthusiastic users of social media out there. Kevin Smith is running with it.

I was shocked to read today that Alexander McQueen had taken his own life. He’s a designer whose career I’ve followed closely; his work was inspired by London nightlife and the style of the demimonde, and executed to the highest level possible (a very compelling combination). The clothes he made were a bizarre and fabulous dream.

He was very influential, beyond creative, and a true original. His absence will make the design world much less interesting.

Addendum: Women’s Wear Daily has a very thoughtful piece on McQueen’s career.

Image from McQueen’s spring/summer 2010 collection, from Style.com