Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Seth Godin Tries Out Brandjacking

outspokenmedia.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 63 posts

Re: Seth Godin Tries Out Brandjacking

#41

Post by dhimes »

patio11 wrote: post #8
MrMatt wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand the legalities of this. What is to stop a company listed on there from suing for trademark infringement?

If they're smart, the fact that precisely nothing would make Seth's day more than being sued by a large corporation trying to stamp down on the little guy trying to expose their horrible business practices. Seth can't get his new business venture onto the front page of the NYT by himself, after all -- he needs your legal department to make that happen. The rest of the Fortune 500 will promptly DDOS his order takers w…

I bet he can find himself in a lot of trouble if he republishes something slanderous. He would be a co-defendant with the site that originally published it.

Imagine a scenario where somebody makes a slanderous comment on some silly little web page that not very people know or care about. If his page becomes very popular, the financial damages may be almost entirely due to the fact that people saw the comment on his page rather than the original.

Anyway, didn't we banter about another company pulling an asshole move like this a while back? They set it up so it looked like companies that didn't use their service were neglecting their customers?

Re: Seth Godin Tries Out Brandjacking

#42

Post by trebor »

Can someone explain how aggregation (for blackmail) is "value-adding" to a business? My company considers $4,800 a year in bribes to Squidoo as evil as an e-paparazzi goblin. No business with any internet savvy would cave to these ransom notices, as anyone with a Google search can still turn up the "dirt" that business paid $4,800 to bury.

Not only do I consider Seth's move unethical, but it's lame too.

Re: Seth Godin Tries Out Brandjacking

#43

Post by scotty79 »

I think the idea is awesome. It's so much more convenient to go to one place aggregating information from internet to decide whether brand is trustworthy instead lurking around different hard to read forums to get the info yourself.

Therefore it's a good free service for customers.

It also may become good service for companies because as massive amount of people starts using his site to get information about brands, he offers the companies cheap way to cover up their errors for large part of their potential customers.

Guy is a genius and Lisa Barone just doesn't get it. Being Chief Branding Officer probably makes you angry about anything that may help customers recognize true value of brands.

Re: Seth Godin Tries Out Brandjacking

#44

Post by gamache »

mseebach wrote: post #10

Meh. Get off your high horse. Squidoo is even stressing the fact that it's unofficial to the point where it's annoying. OK, so the author thinks it's useless, that's a valid opinion, but that doesn't make it unethical. It's a website that mentions other brands. So does Yelp and any other local search service. Business and Finance Websites. Not to mention all the [brand]sucks.com websites. http://www.squidoo.com/kfc-i…

Brands In Public's sole purpose as a moneymaking enterprise is to convince brandholders that paying for control of their brand's page is a good idea.

The only way to effectively do this is to make the alternative, leaving control of the page to Squidoo, a bad idea for the brandholder.

All legality issues aside (and I don't believe there are many), either Squidoo decides to showcase the less desirable side of a brand in hopes of getting money, or they don't make money because the brandholders are satisfied with the way their page looks.

It is totally different from Yelp, who collects business reviews independently of the business owner. It is different from XXXXXsucks.com sites, which do not offer to remove certain content for a fee. It is different from local search sites, whose purpose is to collect as many business addresses as possible in hope of SEO.

Just like GetSatisfaction, this is a protection racket. You pay, or you lose something valuable -- "maybe". Without the "maybe", the operation loses its teeth. With the "maybe", the operation loses its ethics.

Re: Seth Godin Tries Out Brandjacking

#45

Post by mseebach »

gamache wrote: post #44
mseebach wrote: post #10

Meh. Get off your high horse. Squidoo is even stressing the fact that it's unofficial to the point where it's annoying. OK, so the author thinks it's useless, that's a valid opinion, but that doesn't make it unethical. It's a website that mentions other brands. So does Yelp and any other local search service. Business and Finance Websites. Not to mention all the [brand]sucks.com websites. http://www.squidoo.com/kfc-i…

Brands In Public's sole purpose as a moneymaking enterprise is to convince brandholders that paying for control of their brand's page is a good idea. The only way to effectively do this is to make the alternative, leaving control of the page to Squidoo, a bad idea for the brandholder. All legality issues aside (and I don't believe there are many), either Squidoo decides to showcase the less desirable side of a brand…

> The only way to effectively do this is to make the alternative, leaving control of the page to Squidoo, a bad idea for the brandholder.

If you assume evil, don't be surprised if that turn out to be the conclusion.

> this is a protection racket. You pay, or you lose something valuable

Well, any sale can be spun that way, with the something valuable being the good on sale.

What isn't demonstrated is the intent that not controlling your brands -in-focus page is damaging, rather than the neutral option.

The premise of this product is that the discussion is already happening, and than such a page can be somehow used to control it. That indicates that not buying would be neutral.

Granted, I can't see what I'd use such a page for, but then again, I'm not a brand manager.

> Just like GetSatisfaction

As I recall the GetSatisfaction debacle, they were essentially passing themselves of as agents of the brand. This is not an issue here.

Re: Seth Godin Tries Out Brandjacking

#46

Post by Maro »

gamache wrote: post #25
reedlaw wrote: post #13

This is just like MerchantCircle, GetSatisfaction, etc. How many of these types of sites can businesses bear before deciding enough is enough? I don't think there's room for many more.

I wonder when fingers will be broken because an internet company thinks they can get into the extortion business without hiring any goons. Seriously. Legal responses are limited, and it's only a matter of time before a targeted company decides to try Plan B because Plan A sucks.

Cool, then once I get sick of programming I can change couriers and become a Web2.0 goon.

Re: Seth Godin Tries Out Brandjacking

#47

Post by GHFigs »

tsally wrote: post #5

Honestly if you really want to create a good brand, create a useful product and be an honest company. Seth is wrong; you can control what people say about you. But you can't hack it with a system like this. And if your not a sleazy corporation producing bad product, you certainly don't need something like Public Brand.

Seth is wrong; you can control what people say about you.

Would you mind explaining this?

Re: Seth Godin Tries Out Brandjacking

#48

Post by GHFigs »

10ren wrote: post #29

Great opportunity, poor execution. Big companies are concerned about their image. The net does change how PR is done, and no-one yet knows how to do it. So making that problem managable is an important contribution. Let's be clear: for a big company, $400 pcm is a rounding error for PR expense. The real question is whether that expense will actually do them any good. And so we move to execution: The info on the actua…

What Amazon PR problem?
Post reply on HN