Seth Godin Tries Out Brandjacking

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?"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

His blog is not much respected.

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 ...

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.

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.

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.

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.

Google should start penalizing this kind of sites

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

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[....]"

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Douche bag move.

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

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

It's jump on Seth day.