Seth Godin Tries Out Brandjacking

http://outspokenmedia.com/reputation-management/seth-godin-brandjacking/

by onreact-com • 17 years ago

122 61 17 years ago

patio112• 17 years ago

Like GetSatisfaction, stripped to its essentials this is "I have an authority domain and can rank for your brand name. Such a wonderful brand, would hate to see anything happen to it. $5,000 a year is cheap to you, isn't it?"

MrMatt2• 17 years ago

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

patio112• 17 years ago

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 with their credit card numbers when that gets published. He'll also collect tens of thousands of links, many of them from authority sites such as TechCrunch, Slashdot, Consumerist, the newspapers which take direction from the NYT, etc etc, and as a result rank much better for other brands than he had previously.

If they're stupid, hopefully they're not so stupid that they'll ignore the lawyers who will say there is not even a scintilla of a case.

[Edit: Its not letting me respond because the site is worried I'm flaming you, which is totally not my intent.

In sum, litigation is a last-resort dispute resolution mechanism which you use to achieve business goals. Litigation here will not achieve business goals. On a totally separate level, which is academically interesting but only that, BigCo would be unlikely to prevail with a claim of trademark infringement.

There is no danger of confusion between Ford and Ford In Public -- it says "unofficial", prominently. There is no cognizable commercial damage -- Seth is not trying to sell cars. If you were a particularly bad trademark lawyer, you might argue that someone saying bad things about your brand causes you damage, but that cuts against a finding of trademark infringement, because it tends to demonstrate that the mark is being used, take your pick, transformatively, for identification ("nominative use"), and for purposes of commentary.

But, again, first rule of law for programmers: law is not program code, and litigation is not executing an algorithm. It is a negotiating tactic.]

mseebach3• 17 years ago

It's not illegal to talk about a trademark or collect information about it, and present that. A newspaper article talking about a bunch of negative blogposts and tweets about a brand is not infringement, and Squidoo isn't much different.

It's illegal to try to pass yourself off as someone affiliated with or endorsed by someone when that's not the case by using their trademark. The five instances of the word "unofficial" all displayed prominently above the fold on the Squidoo pages should take care of that.

qeorge3• 17 years ago

Not really. GetSatisfaction was misleading customer's into thinking their site was an official support channel for the brand. Apples and oranges.

Besides, Squidoo.com isn't an authority domain, and its "lenses" don't rank for anything on Google.

fallentimes• 17 years ago

Not true on both accounts. They rank for over 125,000 keywords.

Source: http://spyfu.com/Domain.aspx?d=4637578045168633002

sireat• 17 years ago

Seth is a bit late to the game, even someone as respected/known in programming circles as Ward Cunningham does the same thing with his http://www.aboutus.org/Ward_Cunningham (although to be sure Ward doesnt try to monetize that hard)

I personally found it extremely annoying when one of my projects was ranking first on aboutus as a simple stub.

ulf• 17 years ago

When you think about it, its rather surprising that this has not already happened in a big way...

onreact-com• 17 years ago

In case this business model actually works soon enough you get dozens of websites wanting you to pay them for your brand.

GHFigs5• 17 years ago

That doesn't follow. The supposed blackmail value of anything a site like this might publish diminishes the more sites try to publish it. A site will have to actually add value instead of selling the illusion that you can truly control what is said about you online. Whether Squidoo/Brands In Public is adding value now is debatable, but time will tell.

tsally2• 17 years ago

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.

GHFigs5• 17 years ago

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

Would you mind explaining this?

tsally2• 17 years ago

Sure. I simply meant that having a useful product and a good company culture will largely control what people say about you. Google is a great example. I'm not sure what they'll be like going forward, but their record since 2000 is pretty stellar. While not as rare as it once was, Google bashing is still uncommon.

On the other hand, if you engage in underhanded business tactics and don't really care about your customers, you'll have a much harder time controlling the public opinion. Microsoft has been fighting this battle for a long time, and sometimes the results are quite comical. See the Seinfeld/Gates commercial for an example.

Tichy2• 17 years ago

Wow, I so don't see the point of Brands In Public. Is it for companies who don't have their own web site? Because otherwise, why would you want to reply on some third party web site, rather than on your own?

pbhjpbhj2• 17 years ago

You wouldn't, but if your brand is big enough you don't have a choice. It's just a new way to blackmail businesses - as if you went to a corp and said "I'm creating an advert about you that's going to show in all your Google searches, pay me enough and I'll make it friendly, don't pay and we'll make sure everyone hates you".

Tichy2• 17 years ago

Didn't think of the Google searches. Still, it seems only suckers would pay up.

fnid• 17 years ago

The point is for Seth to make money.

The_Lost_Hacker• 17 years ago

Douche bag move.

asmosoinio• 17 years ago

By Seth or the author of the article?

barredo2• 17 years ago

I guess Seth

GHFigs5• 17 years ago

Your comment could be improved by explaining why.

callmeed• 17 years ago

I think the article explains it just fine. Nothing wrong with expressing agreement with 3 words.

mseebach3• 17 years ago

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-in-public isn't anymore brand-jacking of KFC than http://outspokenmedia.com/reputation-management/seth-godin-b... is brandjacking of Seth Godin.

gamache2• 17 years ago

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.

mseebach3• 17 years ago

> 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.

reedlaw• 17 years ago

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.

gamache2• 17 years ago

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.

Maro3• 17 years ago

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

jgilliam• 17 years ago

They have to undercut all of them by doing it themselves. If big brands start publishing this stuff on their own sites, no one will bother with the other sites.

robryan• 17 years ago

No problem with an opt in model, or even an op out, but I'm guessing you can't even opt out?

GHFigs5• 17 years ago

You can't opt out of being talked about on the internet.

barredo2• 17 years ago

Google should start penalizing this kind of sites

calambrac• 17 years ago

After looking at the actual site, the worst thing about it turns out to be the logo. Seriously, the two squids holding tentacles is one of the most disturbing SFW images I've seen in a while.

Anyways, I don't see anything about this that's as horribly unethical as the picture the article is trying to paint. It's certainly not as bad as the Get Satisfaction fiasco, where GS was doing everything short of directly claiming to be an official support channel for companies that had no affiliation. This is just a lame aggregation with a lamer business model. I'm more disappointed in Seth for a lack of creativity, style, and value.

rms• 17 years ago

Why was Skittles.com a great idea but this is unbelievably evil? Now all of these companies are getting a Skittles.com for free.

buugs• 17 years ago

Because a company was trying something new with its marketing. Now you get all this for free but if you want any control you need to pay a fee.

Maro3• 17 years ago

"This morning, Seth used his much respected blog..."

His blog is not much respected.

tamas• 17 years ago

Who is this guy anyways? I saw lots of submits to his blogs on HN and other sites, but they seemed short, shallow and uninteresting, so I figured they were posted because Seth Godin is some kind of authority, not because they were so good posts. But I never figured out when and how he became such an authority.

Maro3• 17 years ago

I guess he wrote some books. Also, he has a very distinctive hairstyle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth_Godin

zach• 17 years ago

Godin is not a great blogger. He is primarily a speaker to business and seems quite good at that. Here is a video of him at Google three years ago (i.e. at the apex of Google the company) where he basically summarizes all the things he gets worked up about. I think it's a pretty effective message.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6909078385965257294

10ren2• 17 years ago

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 actual pages is not helpful. There's no way to get a sense of "what is being said". It's almost as confusing as trying to get the info by browsing the net. I think a solution would be something like "google trends/news for social media". For example, amazon's PR problem isn't apparent at all: http://www.squidoo.com/amazon-in-public In fact, it looks like mostly amazon PR. For it to be taken seriously, the raw information needs to be clear and neutral (like Google not having pay-for-placement search results).

But the biggest problem is whether anyone will actually look at these pages, apart from PR departments. Consumers don't use brands like that. Before you buy a Coke, do you usually have the urge to see how their branding is going? Possibly, bloggers/reporter will use it, and will see the PR response at the same time, and therefore it helps disseminate the company's message.

But the problem/opportunity is real, and this suggests a startup: a google-for-brands. The technical challenge is to work out how to extract the relevant, valuable information; the marketing challenge is to get known (e.g. quoted by bloggers, by news services). Then, you can work out a way to charge for it. Perhaps like a Gallup poll; or a newswire service.

GHFigs5• 17 years ago

What Amazon PR problem?

10ren2• 17 years ago

From Seth's blog that launched brands in public: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/09/launching-br...

Over the last few months, we've seen big brands (like Amazon and Maytag) get caught in a twitterstorm.

JustRick• 17 years ago

Mr Godin clearly needs a http://www.squidoo.com/seth-godin-in-public to track all of this discussion about his brand all over the web.

rictic• 17 years ago

I found http://www.squidoo.com/squidoo-in-public to be delightful.

tmorton• 17 years ago

The problem here isn't the "brandjacking", it's the "curate this page" option. As a customer, this sort of site is only useful if it's uncensored and focused - I want to read about the Kindle DRM problems along side the fawning reviews.

Basically, "curated" pages become useless. Non-curated pages might be useful, but I'm not going to trust a site whose business model depends on "pay us to take down negative reviews."

This isn't an ethical issue, it's just a big gaping hole in the business model.

wheaties• 17 years ago

Ah and here I thought online piracy was relegated to backwater communities and such. At least he's open about how he's trying to extort money from you. I have only two things I'd like to wave his way and they're both fingers.

numbchuckskills• 17 years ago

"Brands in Public is nothing more than a 5k a year public Google Alert" - so true.

adrianwaj2• 17 years ago

It's jump on Seth day.

qeorge3• 17 years ago

Viewed through the lens of a customer seeking to evaluate a vendor, an aggregation of the social media community's feelings about said vendor could be quite useful. What he's put together isn't that great, but the idea is sound.

But by ransoming control of the page to the brand he's gone awry. Are we to assume that if Allstate pays the $400/month they can censor whatever they like on the page? If so, that destroys the value of the site completely, and it does start to seem more like brandjacking. But more than anything, this strikes me as a ham-fisted attempt to make the hapless Squidoo.com relevant.

Also, a lot is being made of the SEO play here, and in my opinion its much ado about nothing. Squidoo pages haven't ranked for anything in years, as any noob at Digital Point forums will tell you. And they shouldn't - the majority are meaningless aggregations of unoriginal content thrown together by a user who will never update it again, or an amateur SEO wasting their time trying to get a free dofollow link.

tjic• 17 years ago

Quick - someone tell Seth that his brand is being crapped all over at [sethgodin].news.ycombinator.com, but he can own the sidebar for a low low monthly price of ...

trebor• 17 years ago

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.

adrianwaj2• 17 years ago

Personally, he's done nothing wrong. It's public, openly available information that some people want.

If that information is tampered by the underlying company, then people will probably want less of it. If companies want to pay Seth to put up alongside that content, how is that bad or wrong? Isn't that just like having sponsored links alongside Google SERPs?

Has Google 'brandjacked' IBM if it allows sponsored links next to IBM related search lookups, especially if those links are to Dell's site? Thus if Godin has brandjacked, then Google definitely has. Also, Google spiders IBM's websites to get this information. The result: IBM can advertise next to Dell's SERPs and Microsoft and others can compete with Google.

Why get angry? It's just a freakin' mashup. It's not like he's letting competitors to cross-post on one another's listings.

If Godin starts to make money, then competitors will come.

His site is like Alltop - a commodity service, nothing special, but there's probably only enough room in the market for 1.

People who are angry or jealous, don't get mad, get even and compete, there's nothing so far unethical I've seen.

(edit: in fact if he really want to cause a stir, why not just let competitors trash each other on each other's pages? So far that's not possible, and props to him for not allowing it, I could easily see that happening in competitive markets.)

scotty79• 17 years ago

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.

Lol_Lolovici• 17 years ago

Has anybody seen exactly how "taking control of your brand" works? It would be interesting to know how exactly replying on the left sidebar, or whatever, works and how it impacts the original tweet/forum/etc. I see a lot of people are commenting here about how this is blackjacking because the company would filter out the bad information about them and let only nice stuff show. So far I don't see evidence of that or even how that would work so if somebody knows please share.

The way I see it this brand site would be more interesting for the marketing/public relations department of a company that wants to see every discussion about them in one place and jump to the actual content where they want to reply, and not as interesting a page for other people outside the company.

dstorrs• 17 years ago

There is no brandjacking here; Squidoo is very clear that they are not affiliated with the brand.

There is no extortion here unless Seth is flat-out lying about how the site works. He states that all of the content on the page is algorithmically generated [1], and no human has editorial control.

The lack of editorial control also applies to the brand. Even if they pay the $400 / month, they only get control over the left-hand column [2] and nothing states or implies that they have the ability to take down negative comments. In fact, it seems very clear that they cannot take it down.

The main use I can see for this site is for people doing research on a purchase--e.g., checking to see if a Canon PowerShot XS10 is a good camera for them. Even then, I would probably go to something more focused, like ePinions.com.

[1] "Each page collects [online content] about a brand. All of these feeds are algorithmic... the good and the bad show up[....]"

[2] And once [Squidoo builds] the page, the left hand column belongs to you. [...] You can publicly have your say right next to the constant stream of information about your brand[....]"

Seth Godin Tries Out Brandjacking

Related Stories