2Clix – The First Australian Web2.0 Casualty?

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:

2Clix google result sept 2007

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.

John Cleese on TPN

The big press release went out today announcing that John Cleese (yes, THAT John Cleese) will be producing a new series of podcasts which will be hosted on TPN. Read the full announcement here.

What a coup, huh? This is something we’ve been working on for a year. Well, actually, Dean from Funk first started talking to me about doing this a LONG time ago, early 2005 I think. Anyway, it’s finally happened and the video which you can see in the full release I linked to above was played on the big screen today at the Podcast Expo in California. Ewan Spence, Scott Sherman and Brian Ibbott from TPN are all there reprezentin’.

As a child of the 70s I grew up watching Monty Python and Fawlty Towers and was a huge fan of John’s. And then when I got into the corporate video space in 1993, John’s video training series was something we all admired as being state of the art.

And of course his work in films such as “A Fish Called Wanda” was also completely genius.

So having the chance to help promote his new work in the era of podcasting is a complete thrill.

I have to thank Dean Whitebread from Funk for bringing the deal to us in the first place and really championing TPN to John and his people. And it wouldn’t have happened without Ewan Spence continually working away behind the scenes as he always does as TPN’s official VP of STUFF to keep the wheels turning.

This week has had it’s share of ups and downs but it’s great to finish it on a high!

G’DAY WORLD #295 – Vanessa Stacy, the Web2.0 Stripper

Vanessa Stacy

I recently caught up with Vanessa Stacy, aka Vanessa the Undressa, aka the Geek Stripper, aka GoldCoastGirl on Twitter, for lunch and a chat about how she uses Web 2.0 tools like MySpace, YouTube and Twitter to market her business – which just happens to be stripping. It was a fascinating discussion for me because I know NOTHING about the business of stripping, and Vanessa shared a bunch of insights into the life. She takes it very seriously, thinks of it as a business, and works it hard.

Here is her website (link) so you can check out her next show in your town!

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