The Economist published an article this week on the threats and opportunities of blogs and bloggers, “Corporate reputations – The blog in the corporate machine“.
The Threat:
“The spread of “social mediaâ€? across the internet—such as online discussion groups, e-mailing lists and blogs—has brought forth a new breed of brand assassin, who can materialise from nowhere and savage a firm’s reputation.”
The Opportunity:
“Many big companies have been looking eagerly for ways to tailor their advertising to specific groups of consumers. They have found that web logs and internet discussion groups, which bring together people of similar interests, can help them turn hot links into cold cash. But besides trying to get out their message, companies are also learning that blogs can provide early warning signs of potential problems.”
Steve Rubel was also quoted in the article giving tips on how to use a blog for crisis communications, suggesting the creation of a “lockbox blog”.
Despite the attempt at describing pros and cons of consumer generated media and blogs in particular, the article doesn’t do justice to the many positive marketing, PR and branding benefits. Reputation management is not the only reason companies should pay attention to the blogosphere. Regardless, the article does draw more attention to blogging with an influential audience and that’s a good thing.
This article is ten years too late. Where has the Economist been for the last decade.
In 1999, Hawkesmere published ‘Managing Your reputation in Cyberspace’ written by me and the case studies where much better. Blogs did not figure that highly but the rest were all there. A year later I wrote a book to explain how to avoid getting into this mess in the first instance.
And it is simply not true that you can’t see this sort of thing coming.
The trouble with the companies is that they employ boys (aged male over 40 and who have never seen a wiki or read a PR text book) for a wo/men’s jobs.
Weak kneed shareholders are to blame. They should look more closely at the people who look after corporate reputation and relationships and should fire the CEO’s who let the incompetent ones near the Board (sans bonus, severance and pension)
Comment by David Phillips — February 14, 2006 @ 8:00 am