by cameron | Apr 6, 2008 | Podcast, Public Relations
And on Sunday, he rested…….
Holy god damn, what a week. Finally, this morning, TPN is back up (obviously, because I can write this and you can read it). I have to thank Phil Morle from Pollenizer for hooking me up with Jagadeesh from x-minds in India. Jag and his team got TPN back up in amazing time. I wish I’d known about Jagadeesh’s team 10 days ago when I started having problems. I could have saved myself (and TPN’s hosts) a week of grief. Well, they are on my radar now.
And, because I know that THE QUESTIONS THAT I ASK MYSELF DETERMINE MY PERSPECTIVE, I’m thinking up some good questions.
– What could I have done better to avoid this situation?
– How can I make sure we don’t go through that again?
– What made the difference?
The answer to the last one is – Twitter. Phil got involved, and introduced me to Jagadeesh, when I started screaming for help on Twitter. If I didn’t have ~900 people following me on Twitter, I wouldn’t have got that offer of support when I did. Twitter is important, something Misha Cornes obviously misses. If you have a low signal-to-noise ration on your Twitter, then start following better people. She should read my Fast Thinking article.
Before I go – Lee Hopkins wrote a good post about how Aussie PR folks STILL don’t get digital media, based in-part on a chat he and Trevor Cook and I had during lunch at ad:tech in Sydney a few weeks ago.
Over a table discussion after the Digital PR session I took part in, Cameron turned to Trevor Cook (knowing that I am not a PR person and have always taken great pains to point this out) and asked,
“It’s 2008, for f#$ks sake! How come PR companies here STILL don’t get it!?!?â€
A very good question.
As he pointed out, we’ve had blogs as a part of our media landscape for at least 5 years, mainstream media are falling over themselves trying to ‘out 2.0′ each other, we’ve had podcasts for a few years, we’ve had YouTube for what seems like forever…
So how come Australian PR companies still play ‘hide head in sand and pretend it will all go away’ games?
It isn’t just PR – it’s Australian corporates in general. By the way, if you want to check out the work I’ve been doing for Telstra recently, visit their new Enterprise site. It contains podcast interviews I’ve done for them with some of their top executives, chatting about what they do in Telstra and what it’s like to work for for The Big T in 2008. The interviews aren’t scripted and don’t get subjected to much editing by Telstra PR. It’s just a real conversation between me, a member of the public, and a Telstra exec. It’s the closest thing so far I’ve seen in Australia where I large corporation is using Web2.0 to be more conversational.
by cameron | Sep 30, 2007 | Public Relations
Now that a couple of weeks have passed since the 2Clix legal case against Whirlpool was been dropped, I thought it would be an opportune time to examine the impact the decision to initiate legal action has had on the company’s brand.
Unfortunately I don’t have a screenshot of a Google search on their company name prior to the lawsuit, but I took one today and it looks like this:
The first two results belong to 2Clix, their corporate site.
The next four results are from Whirlpool’s site – the first three of those are product reviews and, I suspect, the original entries which caused the ruckus. The fourth is the first of the negative stories about 2Clix suing Whirlpool over negative reviews of their product.
The last four results on the page are all about the legal action (including the post I wrote).
So – unless 2Clix takes some drastic action, the next time someone googles them, they will find a page mostly full of negative stories.
Every time I’ve spoken at a PR or marketing event in the last couple of years, I’ve told the Kryptonite and Warren Kremer Paino Advertising stories and warned that it was only a matter of time before we had one of our own in Australia. And, although 2Clix’s war was with a forum and not a real Web2.0 property, the result of the bloggers jumping onto the story (which the mainstream media then picked up as well) had the same result – the pwnrship of 2Clix’s googlerank.
What are their options now? How do they get control of their googlerank back?
It might happen naturally with time however the Kryptonite case suggests not. It’s been over three years now since Engadget ran the story of how you could pick a Kryptonite bike lock with a Bic pen and their post is STILL the #2 result in Google (link).
Perhaps 2Clix could find a bunch of bloggers to write positive stories about them somehow? I guess if they could get a bunch of bloggers to cover positive case studies they had, and enough people linked to those stories, those posts might climb to the top. But somehow I can’t see that happening.
Unfortunately, I suspect 2Clix have irreparably damaged their googlerank.
by cameron | Sep 11, 2007 | Podcast, Public Relations
Sigh… here we go again… it seems the people from 2Clix haven’t attended any of my talks over the last couple of years where I have explained why jumping the gun and suing a blog/forum/podcast for a couple of negative comments about your company/product/people is just plain STUPID.
I heard about this via Daniel Bowen’s GEEK RANT blog (well via his Twitter post actually) but the original story is up here on Whirlpool.
Here is the substance of the blog post on Whirlpool:
Whirlpool founder Simon Wright is being sued by accounting software firm 2Clix Australia Pty Ltd (ACN 118 044 198) for alleged “injurious falsehood”.
The Statement of Claim from the company alleges that Simon Wright allowed statements “relating to the Plaintiff and its software product that are both false and malicious” to be published on the Whirlpool forums.
2Clix is suing for at least $150,000 (plus costs), and is demanding that two forum threads be removed from the site.
Whirlpool believes the action has no merit and will defend the matter vigorously, despite being a community website with little resources.
Does anyone remember Warren Kremer Paino Advertising? The same thing I said to them back in April 2006 I say now to the folks at 2Clix:
Take some free advice – retract the charges and get on with business. This is a no win situation for your company. You will forever tarnish your reputation. Every time someone Googles your company in the future all they are going to read about is how you sued a small-time online forum over a couple of negative comments. This isn’t a winnable situation for you. Your Googlerank will be screwed FOREVER. No amount of money can buy it back. Bail out now.
You’ve got two choices:
1. You can pursue this matter and try suing the entire blogosphere who will comment on it. It won’t even matter if you win against Whirlpool – there will be ten thousand blogs talking about the case.
2. You can accept that negative feedback is a part of doing business and learn how to manage the online process effectively. Call me (+61 400455334). I can advise you.
Oh and everyone else – you can digg the original Whirlpool post here.
technorati tags: 2clix, whirlpool
