I was also interviewed yesterday by Leon and Garry at The Age which will come out in the SMH/AGE business section soon as well as on their TPN Take Two podcast (taketwo.thepodcastnetwork.com).
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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.
When I had Matt Marks on the show recently talking about politicians using Web2.0 to engage their audience, I wish I’d seen this example. Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett (who was my guest on the show back in February 2005) has a video on his Facebook profile where recent G’Day World guest Julian Burnside QC explains why he believes why it is critical that Bartlett gets re-elected. Check out the video here. Not too shabby when the most visible defender of human rights in the country records a special video plugging you as “a person who is completely honest”. I think this is an amazing example of how to use Web2.0 correctly. This isn’t Andrew talking about how good he is – it’s Australia’s leading human rights lawyer talking about how good he is. Burnside carries a lot of weight in my book. Does something like this have an impact on how you are likely to vote?
Ben Barren, CEO of Feedcorp, joins me on this show to interview author Adam Shand.
As people in Melbourne will be very aware, in the last decade there was a series of high profile retributional killings involving various underworld groups that cost the lives of at least 28 criminal figures.
Adam Shand, a journalist who works for The Bulletin and Channel Nine’s Sunday program, spent four years researching Melbourne’s underworld and has written a book about it called “BIG SHOTS: The Chilling Inside Story of Carl Williams”. He became close in particular to “drug czar” Carl Williams who is currently serving a minimum term of 35 years in maximum security. Adam gives us a bunch of insight into how Melbourne’s gangland works, the background to the gangland wars over the last decade, the role of the Victorian police, the role of the Victorian mainstream media, and how it could have perhaps been avoided.
Become part of the G’Day World conversation.
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The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.
My final interview from the X | Media | Labs event I attended last month. This one is with Jason Roks, currently acting as a Technical Advisor with The Real News, a non-profit news and documentary network focused on providing independent and uncompromising journalism. Jason talks to me about the vision for The Real News as well as his concerns about Net Neutrality.
Become part of the G’Day World conversation.
I’ve created a couple of groups inside Second Life. You can now add yourself to the following groups:
If I knew how to link directly to those groups from here, I would. But I don’t. So for now you just need to search for them in-world. Or you can add “Cameron Switchblade” to your friends and check out the groups I belong to.
If you’re a member of Facebook, you can ADD ME AS A FRIEND and then ADD YOURSELF TO THE G’DAY WORLD GROUP.
You can show your love by buying me stuff from my Amazon wish list.
Add me to your Twitter account.
Get the TPN version of Particls.
Don’t forget to make use of my new comments line – +613 9016 9699.
You can now buy transcripts of this podcast from Pods In Print.
If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed and leave us a voice comment!
The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.
