Everyone loves a David and Goliath story, where the little guy takes on the big guy and wins. But when it comes to felling corporate giants, social media makes a much better weapon than a sling.
Because online chatter doesn’t upset shareholders while eating their cornflakes there is a temptation for businesses to just ignore bad online PR.
However, as Ryanair found out earlier this year, when it called all bloggers “lunatics”, it can easily spill into the national press.
Much has been made of the viral nature of the internet and how ‘word of mouse’ can make brands famous overnight.
However, if we keep modelling our online communications on a disease, the internet will quickly develop an immune system.
I know that User Generated Content is all the rage these days. Letting your consumers have their say on your own website is currently regarded as enlightened brand thinking.
Although I have my own YouTube channel, a Flickr account, write a blog and actually know what a Wiki is, I’ve started to worry that I many no longer be ‘down’ with the internet kids.
Sunday saw the dawn of my 44th year on this planet and the fact I enjoyed the day on my newly acquired allotment confirmed to me that I was indeed loosing touch.
Google is rumoured to have set aside a $500m war chest when it bought YouTube, to defend itself from copyright infringement claims.
To keep YouTube free of offending material must be a bit like serving soup in a basket – sooner or later you are going to end up with a large dry cleaning bill.
If you were thinking about getting your Christmas booze this week, you might want to avoid Thresher Group outlets, at least until 10 December.
Thanks to their rather too successful dabble with Internet marketing, most of the shelves in Threshers and sister outlets Wine Rack, Bottoms Up, Haddows and The Local, off-licences are now presumably empty.
