Line of Business
Smear here
The Web is a hotbed of disgruntled users -- here's how to deal with them1/16/2004 5:00:00 PM By: Dave Webb
Cybersmear campaigns are as old as the Web itself. Older, in fact -- disgruntled customers
We've long known the power of word of mouth, says Scott Erickson, an associate professor of marketing at Ithaca University in New York. What's new is the exponentially larger audience word-of-mouth criticism can reach over the Internet. Used to be a dissatisfied customer would discourage his immediate circle of friends from using a company's products and services. Now, even your certified troubled loner can circulate his rant to millions.
Erickson was in Hamilton, Ont., last week to present a paper on New Frontiers in Cybersmear: Strategies for Dealing with Uncontrolled Information at McMaster University's World Congress. He outlined a portfolio of strategies for dealing with slam sites, rumour sites, negative spam and message discussion boards.
1. Axe-grinders can't register YourCompanySucks.com if you've beat them to it, and the many variations on the theme. (Note to our friends at Bell Mobility, once legendary for its efforts to register every domain that could conceivably host a hate site: smellmobility.com is now available.) Don't over look common misspellings or transpositions. Type proctorandgamble.com into your browser -- it's owned by a Dr. Peter Proctor, not Procter & Gamble, and there's some mildly critical material linked to the page.
2. You probably couldn't afford to register every option, even if you could think of them all. And you can't. When it hit the fan at Enron, a rumour site started at 1400smith.com -- the company headquarters street address. When Worldcom was melting down, a slam site was located at boycottworldcom.com, says Erickson. When the company changed its name back to MCI, it was chagrined to find boycottmci.com already registered.
3. Engage your enemies. Consider joining discussion groups that host critical content to set the record straight or open up discussion. Sure, some people will always be suspicious of The Man, but you can mediate the bad publicity to a degree.
4. The knee-jerk lawsuit isn't necessarily the best route to go, even if it's much easier to win a libel judgment against a detractor in Canada than in most of the civilized world. (In Canada, libel is a reverse-onus crime -- prosecutors don't have to prove guilt. The accused must prove innocence. The only other such crime in Canada is treason.) It's David-versus-Goliath syndrome -- the negative publicity of the lawsuit often outweighs the benefit. Consider the McLibel trial in the U.K., says Erickson. While McDonalds won almost every count against a pair of pamphleteers protesting the restaurants' environmental practices, ""the bad publicity was worse than anything in the leaflets,"" Erickson notes.
5. Selective prosecution is an option. Make an example of a few egregious violators and put the fear of God into the rest, a la the Recording Industry Association of America, which brought suits against people who shared music files online. Selectivity is an important aspect, though -- being known as the organization who sued a pre-teen file-swapper didn't do much for the RIAA's reputation.
6. One sometimes overlooked strategy -- address the problem. ""Complaints are good information. Complainers aren't typical customers, but what they're complaining about is typical,"" Erickson says. ""If there's something wrong with your product or you've got 12-year-olds working overseas, maybe you should do something about it.""
We'll be covering cybersmear strategies in more detail in the April issue of EDGE.
Dave Webb was manufactured without the use of sweatshop labour.
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