How Can You Control Who Uses Your Name?

By Alina Popescu on October 14th, 2008 in Business & Corporate, Social Media & Communities

Company X Romania is a well respected company on the domestic market. It’s been around for a while and would not for the life of me yield the “beginner marketer” idea in my head. Yet I got this spammy comment (yes, I always double-check Akismet) promoting one of their not so recent announcements. The comment was made by a guy linking to an internet marketing site of exactly one page. No link to company X whatsoever, just the info on them…

Now, there are a few issues to consider:

  • Is X paying these guys or testing what they can do? Well, then, they are doing a pretty bad job, they don’t even use spammy links to X. And why would the company’s Romanian branch benefit from traffic from foreign sites when it clearly targets Romania?
  • Are they trying to impress X Romania on their own, trying to get a contract signed? Really bad strategy then.
  • Is this company trying to show off their web exposure skills and traffic increasing strategy to other bloggers? Even worse strategy…
  • Are they harvesting links to their site with randomly picked news excerpts based on a blogger’s country of origin? Possible. Again, poor strategy! They promote their internet marketing services, I am sure there are quite a few posts here they could have chosen for a legitimate comment and a link (do follow one even)

If X Romania is actually paying these guys to generate traffic to their site, worse choice ever!

If X Romania is in no way affiliated with these spammers, how can they protect their image? Hope this is a one-time offense? Read this post and contact the guys? They have a one page site and two email addresses as contacts, is there any real chance to get them to stop? Hope everyone will understand it’s the last issue I pointed to and no one will think X=SPAM?

What can you really do when a bogus “internet marketing guru” is using your brand to spam others? Disclose it and hope for some good online coverage? Warn said company and hope they’ll stop. Ignore them and pray this goes away without an image crisis? What do you think?

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This post has 6 comments

  • Ovidiu
    October 15th, 2008

    Why do people think image is a separate product, a thing to “build” and which can be “destroyed”? Not that I want you to lose your job or anything :D

    I’m assuming X has a good image. This can come ONLY come from good products and services.

    We can split people in 3 categories:

    1. X customers. They are happy (see my assumption above) – or X has bigger problems than this spam.
    2. people who are not customers but heard mostly good things about X.
    3. people who never heard about X.

    Numbers 1 and 2 know enough of X (and I also assume are smart enough) to not care about the spam.

    The only category who can be influenced enough to matter by the said spamming is number 3. And since they never heard about X, X doesn’t have the means to reach them and change their mind anyway. No need to worry about it.

    What I would do is a simple shoot and forget tactic:

    * email the spammer and tell them politely to stop. No threats, no money involved. Just let them know it’s not cool, but I don’t sweat about it. Ignore all replies, never engage in a conversation!

    * publish a small disclaimer/announcement stating I had nothing to do with the spamming. Make sure I don’t look desperate or nervous and basically not make a big deal out of it. Also, you don’t want to start spaming your own contacts with this announcement, so the news section on the website is enough, or a short paragraph on the newsletter.

    * stop waisting my time with useless PR questions and get back to work to keep my customers happy. Not that I want you to lose your job or anything. Really.

  • Alex Cristache
    October 15th, 2008

    Even if the online environment seems to be a jungle, it’s not. There are rules and regulations.
    So, if someone uses your brand name for personal profit and it’s in no way affiliated with your brand, you can sue their a*s without a doubt.

    Legal action, plus some media coverage is the best way to deal with potentially image damaging online activities.

    Alex Cristaches last blog post..Breaking the Blogging Patterns

  • Alina Popescu
    October 15th, 2008

    Hi Ovidiu,

    Image is strongly linked to reputation, which can be broken quite easily. Thinking of a recent example (which is a bit extreme – http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/local-business-owner-needs-serious-reputation-management/1316/), I can say that no matter how good your product or service is, if potential buyers associate you with a negative image, they will buy from someone else.

    Yes, your current customers might be happy enough to look the other way, but let’s say the spammer annoys a lot of people with better ranks than mine and a search for Company X returns 10 results on spamming :) Do you think a new customer would buy? This is a Romanian company, true, given by the rank of their site, I doubt it’s a strong channel to get new customers, but as things evolve and most buying and selling moves online, managing one’s online reputation will become crucial.

    Anyway, nice to see you somewhere else than the offices of BitDefender :) As for losing my job, don’t worry, I can handle it!

  • Alina Popescu
    October 15th, 2008

    Hi Alex, you are right, there are ways. But if it’s a bogus site, calling in the lawyers might be too much and way too expensive.

    A disclaimer would be a good way to start, and yes, Ovidiu is right, it should not sound desperate. If the issue goes out of control, well, it’s time for a new strategy :)

  • Loredana
    October 15th, 2008

    Any association is linked to the person/company behind that association. I understand that this situation does not involve something okay (useful) for the company with whom the association is made. In this case, it’s all about the person behind this bad association: what motivates this person? Is he/she an unsatisfied employee? Does he/she thinks that by linking his/hers name to a famous company will result in many visits on his/hers website and/or orders (contracts)?

    However the subject is very interesting – especially due to the fact that on Internet one cannot actually say that he/she has 100% control of the brand.

  • Alina Popescu
    October 15th, 2008

    Loredana, I’d say that control over a brand is closer to 0 that to 100%. Remember the guy who made the video with the Dove and Axe commercials playing side by side stating the company owning both brands is selling a lot of bs?

    You are right, motivations are important to understanding what the person misusing your brand wants to achieve and maybe help prevent further damage.

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