Reputation Defending: be ready to protect the Brand Reputation…

The advent of internet with its website, blog, forum, socials, has completely changed the way we publicly communicate and share opinions.

Here an example with a website that deals with phones, where everyone can convey his feeling and opinion, through public comments. In this way promoting or failing a product by altering the feelings of others, undermining the potential purchase…As you can figure out, this can be done in the context of the right. In this case, we have a dissatisfied customer that expresses his legitimate ideas about a product that he does not like. Unfortunately this can happen also in the context of premeditation.

Now let’s imagine that a Company would pay some influencers (hence “influencer marketing”), to bury the negative reviews and comments to a competitor considered a “dangerous competitor” on the market.
Does it seem impossible? Absolutely not: it is one of the most common practices from the late 90’s, by the advent of technical forums and thematic portals.

There has been a long time, almost 15 years, when there were no rules or laws to protect the image and online reputation. That means that what was happening online, in the case described above, was completely in a “no man’s land”. No respect, no control.

How much worse, this was the ideal situation for spreading sites promoting false news. Fake news are a reality, and we should all work together to fight back this plague.

The only possible way, when it is about news, it is check the origin of the news.

A good practice is to check if over that website there are names of journalists or writers, if these guys are existing people. Another practice is to check if the website is a registered magazine or not.

It is obvious that this is not a practice within the reach of the average web user. For this reason these sites have often achieved their goals, which are mainly to make sure that many innocent users spontaneously share the fake news in their channels.

 

Fake news have used in many occasion to try to damage Brand Image of unfortunate: from political parties, to public figures, to private business..

Meanwhile, the laws on the protection of the image online, which concern cyber security and cyber crimes, have been evolved a lot.
It is good that those who practice these improprieties marketing actions, look well from keeping on!

Let me be clear: today the unfair practice of the negative reviews calculated (paid), if proven, is 100% punishable by law under a clear attempt to damage Company or individual image in the most of the countries. Also the “personal opinion” if expressed using words that attack the Company image (vulgarity, insinuations etc). can be persecuted as a cyber crime of defamation.

If you look for information about plans about online reputation management, fell free to contact me.

In order to provide always the best advice and the best solutions, I work very close to Legal experts about online reputation and Intellectual property. An IT Security expert is always part of my strategic team when it is time to work on a Brand strategy.
I think super positive. But the Plan B about online defence is always black on white….