CorpComms Magazine

These situations are becoming increasingly common as companies try to tackle the many-headed hydra that is the worldwide web. Executives who previously embraced the internet's power to sell products or advertising become decidedly less enthusiastic when the so-called social media starts talking about their business. 

These bloggers, message board contributors and small entrepreneurs can be extremely influential, which is fine when they are saying something good - but they are also almost impossible to control when they have something negative to say, although that does not stop companies from trying. 

The internet is almost completely self-policing, and it favours the fast, the young and the entrepreneurial. Companies or individuals that deal with any online threat to their brands or trademarks using a standard legal approach often end up looking oldfashioned or bullying. 

Barely a week goes by without news of some established brand or company clashing online with people running blogs or other web sites. Whether it is Damien Hirst trying to buy his own name back from a lesser-known artist, or Google trying to ban the use of the verb 'googling' when referring to a search on a rival search engine, the effect is the same - media coverage will almost always favour the blogger rather than the corporate blimp, and the company or brand will end up looking like it has had a sense of humour failure. 

Sarah Chapman, associate director of public relations company Dig For Fire, says: 'The drama calls attention to the problem. The company often ends up handing out free publicity to the social media. It is very easy for them to look too heavy-handed.' 

Rebel Yell

Chapman describes a lesson that Yellow Pages owner Yell appears to have learned the hard way. The company took on Yellowikis, an internet rival that allows any company to add and edit its own online listings.

Yell was concerned that people would perceive the site as part of its own business and took legal action to try to make the company hand over its name. 'We have no desire to stop Yellowikis trading but simply wish to eliminate any risk of them being associated with our brand,' Yell spokesman Jon Salmon explains. 'Any other sensible and commercially aware business such as Yell operating in a competitive environment would take a similar view.' 

The spat gained media coverage because Yellowikis was, unusually, owned and run by a 15-year-old girl and her father. The Guardian, for example, carried interviews with the Yellowikis owners, who gained a high-profile backer - Jimmy Wales, founder of user-edited encyclopaedia Wikipedia. Paul Youlten, who owns Yellowikis with his daughter Rosa Blaus, says the company has been offered mediation and has declined to comment further. 

'We have offered Mr Youlten the opportunity to settle this matter through mediation, including the possibility of changing his company's name,' says Salmon. 

Alex Macauley, a senior brand valuer at consultancy Interbrand, says that Yell, like many other companies, knows it is vitally important to protect the brand on the internet. But he also warns that it is important for companies to consider the means by which they achieve this. 

'It is particularly important that brands which purport to be friendly and easy-going exercise caution in these matters,' he says. 'If you take a fairly aggressive approach and go straight for the legal letter, you may receive media coverage that erodes your public perception.' 

Yell, Macauley says, may suffer from this because it is a brand with a friendly image. 'This could have a negative effect on demand,' he asserts. Similarly, Google and Disney are the type of brands that really cannot afford to have any bad publicity in this area. 'These companies and their brands are all about being friendly,' points out Macauley. 

The Yell spat has certainly left its footprints all over the internet. UK technology blog Beers & Innovation is one of the sites that has considered the PR implications of Yell's intervention. 'I go to the Yellowikis homepage and I can't see how anybody would think this was the wiki version of Yell,' writes Beer & Innovation blogger Deirdre Molloy. 'What is this action going to do for the Yell brand? Nothing positive I'd wager.' 

Molloy is answered by blogger and consultant Simon Dickson, who believes that Yellowikis' claim to be 'the Yellow Pages for the 21st century' doesn't help its case. 'Yell are perfectly within their rights to protect their trademark,' he argues.

Yell is by no means the only company to get into a slanging match with a tiny web site. US media giant Viacom, for instance, managed to pick a fight with a curious UK web site called Pimp My Snack, which is entirely devoted to recipes for giant versions of common confectionery. 

Snack attack

Viacom, which owns the MTV show Pimp My Ride - in which cars are customised with ostentatious accessories - sent Pimp My Snack owner Peter Wilcock a 'cease and desist' legal letter that also asked Wilcock to change his company's name. 

'We note from the context in which it appears that the phrase Pimp My Snack is intended to call the mark Pimp My Ride to the mind of a reader,' wrote London law firm Simmons & Simmons. 'We consider that your use of the Pimp My Snack name is likely to confuse members of the public into believing that your products were produced or approved by our client.' 

Seldom has a giant Bourbon biscuit proved such a threat to a large corporation. The letter also contained a form inviting Wilcock to sign his rights to the web site away. 

Viacom argues that it has generated very substantial goodwill in the use of the Pimp My Ride name, and that its applications for trademarks on both 'Pimp My' and 'Pimp Your' have been accepted and will soon be published. 

Wilcock describes receiving the legal letter as scary, and concedes that he understands why people sometimes sign their rights away. 

'Viacom takes aggressive defence to a whole new level,' says Wilcock. 'What damage has this caused them? It's laughable. Not one person who has come to the web site has confused it with Pimp My Ride.' Wilcock ultimately caved in, however, and changed the site's name to Pimp That Snack. 'It was a matter of time and money,' he sighs. 

But has Viacom won? Certainly, the victory looks distinctly Pyrrhic. Wilcock has left the legal letters at his site's old address, www.pimpmysnack.com, and they continue to garner comment from the internet community. The Inquirer, a US techie site, is bemused.

'The silly English fellows that fiddle with food and started www.pimpmysnack.com soon had Viacom on their backs, complaining that it owned anything with 'Pimp' and 'My' in it,' the Inquirer writes. 'Daft? Certainly. And so 'my' becomes 'that'. Anyone got any idea what the world is coming to?' 

Blogger John Robe is less polite but no less adamant in his condemnation of Viacom: 'Now, I don't want to besmirch Pimp My Ride, because it's an entertaining show - it's not their fault that they happen to have a bunch of jerks as their parent company - but this is just dumb.' 

The story was also picked up in several national newspapers, which rather predictably enjoyed the clash between giant company and giant biscuits. 

Macauley says that Viacom can take comfort in the fact that it is not directly consumer-facing. 'Viacom is already a big company and demand for its products doesn't really depend on friendly perception, so the implications are not particularly serious,' he says. 

Baby steps

A run-in on the net is likely to prove more of a problem when you are dealing with something even closer to a person's heart than their TV viewing. Gina Ford, author of The contented little baby book, is seen as one of the foremost and most controversial childcare authorities in the UK. As well as a range of books, she has even launched her own magazine and community web site. 

Ford may be a big brand, but she also has a sensitive side. This was revealed when she took exception to a posting on mother's community Mumsnet that suggested she 'straps babies to rockets and fires them into south Lebanon'. Another post claimed she was 'cruel, uncaring and justifiably reviled'

Mumsnet is just one of many thousands of childcare discussion boards that litter the internet, full of personal opinions and notoriously difficult to police - but that did not stop Ford taking action. Her lawyers, Foot Anstey, wrote a letter to Mumsnet: 'We are aware that over a significant period of time numerous postings have been made on the web site which are highly defamatory of our client,' they wrote. Through her lawyers, Ford says that the postings 'caused me a huge amount of upset and distress', continuing: 'Any suggestion that I am trying to close down the Mumsnet web site is completely untrue. As I have repeatedly made clear to Mumsnet, I have no objection whatsoever to people discussing or disagreeing with my advice and methods concerning childcare. What has caused me so much upset has been the defamatory campaign waged against me as a person in which I have been described in the most vile and disgusting terms.' 

DSC, the internet service provider behind Mumsnet, was asked to shut the site down immediately but refused. Managing director David Adams describes such an action as a 'disproportionate response. It's like saying the BBC should be taken off the air if they get a complaint about one programme.' 

Mumsnet has asked its members to stop discussing Ford and her methods on the site, which has led to a stream of angry posts about the 'nobody' they are not supposed to mention. 

Justine Roberts, co-founder of Mumsnet, has this to say on the subject of the 'Lebanon rockets' post: 'It is undoubtedly a tasteless joke, particularly under the current circumstances, but when the post appeared on our site no one imagined even the most humourless reader could possibly take it seriously. But evidently we were wrong.' 

And MorningPaper, author of the controversial post, added: 'I apologise to any new mums who may have been confused by my post and would advise that if you are considering utilising your baby in any sort of warfare or military conflict, please speak to your health visitor first.' 

Press ganged

Again, the newspapers were quick to pick up on a spat that could easily have been confined to the internet. The 'Lebanon rockets' comment reappeared in the Evening Standard, Daily Mail, Guardian and Times. Millions of people who would otherwise never have seen the slur on Ford's character have now read it at the breakfast table. It is fairly safe to say that this is not the outcome she wanted. 

As poster Second Child Syndrome wrote on discussion board Pewari's Prattle: 'Ford needs to sit on the naughty step and think about what she has done.' 

So what is the best advice for a company that finds itself caught up in a web war? Chapman says that her biggest problem is that her clients often have only a limited understanding of the way the internet works. 

'Lots of clients have a long way to go in terms of relating to the worldwide web,' she explains. 'Some are very, very cautious. They tend to see the company being written about and they want to stop it. But you can't just clamp down unless something is extremely libellous.' 

Chapman's best advice is to communicate with the company or individual who is causing the problem, but to keep it as pleasant as possible. 'Most of this is just simple common sense,' she points out. She even claims that there is plenty that companies can learn from these individuals - 'They are entrepreneurs and highly skilled people,' she says. 

Macauley believes the key thing is to be more creative about your relationship with social media. 

'Ask yourself, Do we really have to resort to legal letters?' he says. 'The first thing to do is to have a discussion with the people who are infringing and say, This is a problem for us. Try and find a way to make both parties happy.' Above all, it seems that the most important thing is to keep a sense of humour. A media empire has never yet been brought down by a recipe for a giant custard cream. Mind you, there's always a first time.