Is Seth Godin Protecting Your Brand or Just 'Brandjacking' It?
Squidoo's 'Brands in Public' Is Aggregating Online Chatter, but You'll Have to Pay for Control
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Seth Godin wants to protect your brand from Twitter, for $400 a month. The prolific author, blogger, marketing guru, motivational speaker and founder of web service Squidoo this week launched Brands in Public, a new service which creates "unofficial" pages that aggregate ongoing conversations about brands on Twitter, YouTube and blogs.
Brands that sign up get to edit the introductory text, highlight positive tweets or blog posts, point to their own blog or videos, and so forth. "When you take over your brand's page, you don't monitor the conversation (there are plenty of companies that will sell you that service for a lot of money), you coordinate it. In public. Where it's happening," the site says.
In a blog post, Mr. Godin said Squidoo has already built "several hundred" of what he calls "public-facing dashboards" for Trader Joe's, In-N-Out Burger, KFC and Comcast. In an e-mail interview, he said, "We've heard from more than 100 brands after just one day, which is extraordinary given the usual decision cycle for projects that involve big brands."
Brands that appear to be moderating their own pages include Allstate, Molson and Home Depot. (Trader Joe's page includes a not entirely complimentary user-generated ad on YouTube.) A big orange button offers: "Click here if you work for this brand. You can curate this page."
The business is a partnership with online-marketing firm BzzAgent, which provides a feed of comment from its group of product testers, and handles subscriptions and advertising on the sites. But why would any brand want a business that creates "unofficial" brand pages about it, in this case one that aggregates forums for mentions across the web? And if brands are monitoring or participating in social media, why would they want to pay Seth Godin to take part?
In a blog post, online-marketing consultant Lisa Barone called it a form of "brandjacking" "because they're trying to extort 5k a year from you for a free-listening station you could very easily create all by yourself."
Mr. Godin said he's simply organizing information already on the web, like Twitter Search or Google. "Should Twitter be allowed to sell ads next to search results? Is there something wrong with Google selling ads next to their search results? Why isn't it good for consumers for a brand to have their say as part of the conversation? There will always by cynics, critics and haters. Not a lot I can do about it other than offer to not sell them a slot if they don't want one. The internet is a big place," he said.
David Berkowitz, director-emerging media at 360i, said how high the Brand in Public pages appear in search results will determine whether brands decide to take part. Also, he said, the $400 fee is just a start. The bigger cost is the manpower involved in maintaining the pages, which is true of any social-media campaign.
It's not immediately clear when looking at the pages which brands are paying to participate. Brands can't change the comment feeds, but if they pay, they can add their own feed on the left side of the page to highlight the positive or to respond to the conversation.
While brands don't get a choice whether Squidoo makes an "unofficial" page for them, Mr. Godin said he would take a brand page down. "Sure, if you ask nicely," he wrote in the FAQ. "Up to you. Your fans may be disappointed, though."
For the record, he said, no one has yet asked.
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What I don't get it is that companies do not have a say in that representation. Isn't there a potential legal issue floating around here or did I miss something? And what if a company asks "brusquely" instead of nicely to be taken down? Does change the liklyhood of it going down?
Noemi Pollack
http://www,ppmgcorp.com
http://www,pollackblog.com
Seems a bit like Wikipedia though....
So, you can either hire a social media staff to fly around the web, trying to put out fires as they erupt...or you can sacrifice your monthly (insert high-priced coffee brand of choice) budget, and be able to respond to all of them, all in one place. Sounds like a deal to me.
@brianmcmath
As for the concern consumers might be going to the Squidoo page I doubt the traffic will be high enough to worry about. People have barely enough time it is in their lives with so many different things tugging at their eyes this isn't something they will have time for. And I went to Coke's page. If I was pro or anti coke there is so much stuff already on the page it doesn't tell me much aside from showcasing some neat Coke Rewards gear and some fun You Tube Commercials.
If I ran Squidoo I would be keeping the aggregation private and use their proprietary software to sell the service to brands. As long as it is out in the public why pay for the aggregation. As for their intro description if Squidoo writes nasty things because a brand will not pay well good luck fighting the lawsuit for defamation.
Essentially this service seems to act more like an affiliate page, with social feed aggregation just the supporting mechanic.
Instead of the AdSense model, where I pull syndicated ads around my content, this acts more like a 3rd party syndicating your (the brands') content around ...? Perhaps someone else's advertising? The brand's advertising?
Seems to me Godin's business model ain't about the $400 nominal fee for the brand to get a voice and an API. Rather - esp. if this content, as Berkowitz astutely observes, starts to rank high on the engines - the real business model becomes branded advertising.
You - Brand - could quickly end up bidding against your competitors to keep your brand "more prominent" in and around the socially syndicated stuff from consumers (a la Google AdWords et al).
But I have to ask a simple - or is it silly - question: who is the targeted audience for these sites?...
Thom Kennon
thomkennon@yahoo.com
friendfeed.com/tkennon
http://www.twitter.com/blaesch
It would not cost much to do this yourself and it would strengthen the companies website too. I would never pay for such a service.
As much as I like reading his blog I am not impressed with this imitative and its only getting press because it him,
Claus Rodgaard
VerticPortals
As someone else asked, "Who is the target audience for these sites?"
I don't think the average consumer cares about brand comments.
I'm not sure there's really all that much of interest for marketers. I don't want to sift through all that stuff. If there is an interesting case study among all the gathered data, someone else can organize it for me and give me the highlights.
One person elsewhere suggested it might be useful for gathering competitive intelligence.
And maybe if you are doing some investing, you might like to know what people think of a brand.
But as I scrolled through the brands, I remember thinking, "No company here I want to read about to this extent."
http://twitter.com/slainson
Twenty years from now we'll be reminiscing on how "aggregation" was the easiest way to get rich via the Interwebs...
Kevin Horne - NYC
Godin is the man.
Rather, the target is the paranoid and pressured brand manager who feels like he or she doesn't have control of a brand in the social space. But guess what? $400 isn't going to buy you control. And if it did, it would kill the spirit of the conversation.
Jonathan Goldfuss
President, Red Bird Marketing
@redbirdmkt
Technorati RSS or Twitter Search RSS.
This service is not just useless but wrongly drives companies to believe that they are doing social media.
Aggregating is alright, digesting information and make business (or brand) sense is another story,
Mr Godin, I'm big fan of yours, but this seems opportunist, cheap and misleading. Not condign to your own brand.
Lucio Ribeiro
http://www.theonlinecircle.com