Ayn Rand Quote of the Week:
Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.
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What Kind of Impression Have You Left?
Posted on May 19th, 2009 5 comments
Daniel Scocco of Daily Blog Tips posted an interesting article yesterday titled How Far Can We Go to Build Buzz?Apparently a UK company specializing in home PC maintenance called “The Geek Squad” set up a bizarre PR campaign involving a 104 year old woman named Ivy. They set her up with a Twitter account and took some photos and then fed them to the news media as a way to promote their “Silver Surfer Day” campaign — an effort to “encourage more elderly people to get online.”
The issue is that the company promoted Ivy as a Twitter user, when she actually hadn’t used Twitter at all until the day before the PR campaign. There are those who believe that it was a set up. There’s even some suspicion about her Tweets and whether or not they truly are coming from her. I’m not saying they aren’t, but I am saying that some people suspect they aren’t.
Mr. Scocco writes the following:
Personally I am not a fan of faking things to get traffic and buzz (well, except on April 1st…). I believe it just adds noise on the web, and it forces people to compete on a lower level (i.e. resorting to anything to get attention).
After reading the original UK TechCrunch article, I’m still not sure what to believe about all this. However, faked PR stunt or not, I agree with Mr. Scocco’s comment. I also decided it’s time to make a comment or two about online business conduct.
There’s too much emphasis on increasing your traffic.
Yes, it’s nice to have traffic coming to your site. Nobody wants to put in all sorts of effort on a web site or blog only to have it relegated to the arctic circle of the Internet. On the other hand, traffic alone is meaningless. Just because somebody comes to your web site doesn’t guarantee anything other than spent bandwidth.
What you want are committed fans. You want return visitors; people who respect you and want to hear what you have to say. Using manipulative techniques might generate some new eyeballs, but what happens now once the questionable tactics have been exposed. You think those visitors will return once they believe they’ve been had? Probably not.
Such short-term thinking pays very small dividends and can do far more damage than good to your business’ reputation.
There is a need for an ethical standard
Have you ever noticed how ethics is so rarely talked about these days. Especially when considering a standard of ethics for online businesses. In this day and age of political correctness talk about ethical standards brings out the trolls and morons who are either too lazy or too crooked to accept that some things just shouldn’t be done.
There is a minority of people who hate any idea that would limit their activity in any way whatsoever. The words “should” or “should not” simply isn’t in their vocabulary. Yet the majority of people still get outraged at things that are clearly wrong. It strikes me that it would seriously be helpful if there was at least some discussion about ethics in the Internet Marketing world.
Using people is the quickest way to destroy the relationships necessary for long-term business success.
The PR stunt used by The Geek Squad probably worked to generate some traffic, and maybe even some sales. The question that should be asked is what kind of long-term results will be generated. Mr. Scocco’s article and the original UK TechCrunch article exposed some pretty damning issues that I believe will have negative long-term consequences for the company. People don’t like to be used. They don’t like to be tricked or manipulated. They may not have been, but that’s the impression many were left with. Impressions and perceptions are what drive most people’s decisions.
Personally, I don’t know the guys at “The Geek Squad”, so I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they didn’t think things through enough. Maybe they didn’t realize how things would look. The fact is the TechCrunch article left a serious negative impression about them and that impression will have serious repercussions.
I love the fact that you can do business online. But all the hype and dirty business tactics that are currently out there make getting started in an online business all that much more difficult. You have to work that much harder to create the trust needed to build a successful business.
What do you think about all this? Would you use a 104 year old woman to promote your business? Did “The Geek Squad” do anything wrong? What business ethics do you think should be standard?
Picture by flicker user me’nthedogs’ under Creative Commons License. Use of this picture does not constitute an endorsement by me’nthedogs’ of the ideas in this post.
5 responses to “What Kind of Impression Have You Left?”
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i remember that back in 1995, I took one of the first Internet marketing classes offered in an MBA curriculum. We were on ABC news. We only had one textbook (Gopher) and the rest was compilations by our techy prof, including a glossary of terms. I remember memorizing acronym meanings, like HTTP stood for hypertext transfer protocol. In addition to creating a plan for a viable online business, we had to create the skeleton of a web site.
But I particularly remember the discussions around ethics and social responsibility we had. For us, it boiled down to this: a new and different arena for doing business had arrived, but the same sellers of snake oil would be there as they had been for hundreds of years beforehand. The playing field may have changed but human nature and its weaknesses for greed, corruption and power are still with us.
BTW, I wonder if this is the same Geek Squad based out of Best Buy. The US and UK sites look almost the same, down to the color scheme and logo. Interesting.
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On this whole issue of dirty business tricks I have been influenced by two thoughts:
1) “Let the buyer beware;” and
2) “If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.These two thoughts have served to protect me from most snake oil peddlers, though I have been bit a time or two.
Maybe it's my own flawed perception, but it seems to me that the hype, and the dirty business tactics are practically everywhere you look on the web.
I'm going to be spending this week unfollowing most of the internet marketers I'm currently following on Twitter. I'm just getting tired of the constant, unrelenting self-promotion at the expense of genuine connecting. There are a couple I'll still follow because they offer genuine value and keep self-promotion to a minimum, but most just don't get Twitter and their noise ruins the Twitter experience for the rest of us.
I know it's possible to build a good solid business on the web without resorting to the “tricks” and “secrets” of the gurus. I know people who are doing it. Sure they self-promote, but they do it with respect and with an eye to providing genuine value in their relationships with both prospect and customer.
I'd love to see some kind of voluntary Internet based association for businesses who commit to the highest of ethical standards and to willfully correct themselves when they cross the line.
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On this whole issue of dirty business tricks I have been influenced by two
thoughts:
1) “Let the buyer beware;” and
2) “If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.These two thoughts have served to protect me from most snake oil peddlers,
though I have been bit a time or two.Maybe it's my own flawed perception, but it seems to me that the hype, and
the dirty business tactics are practically everywhere you look on the web.I'm going to be spending this week unfollowing most of the internet
marketers I'm currently following on Twitter. I'm just getting tired of the
constant, unrelenting self-promotion at the expense of genuine connecting.
There are a couple I'll still follow because they offer genuine value and
keep self-promotion to a minimum, but most just don't get Twitter and their
noise ruins the Twitter experience for the rest of us.I know it's possible to build a good solid business on the web without
resorting to the “tricks” and “secrets” of the gurus. I know people who are
doing it. Sure they self-promote, but they do it with respect and with an
eye to providing genuine value in their relationships with both prospect and
customer.I'd love to see some kind of voluntary Internet based association for
businesses who commit to the highest of ethical standards and to willfully
correct themselves when they cross the line. -
On this whole issue of dirty business tricks I have been influenced by two
thoughts:
1) “Let the buyer beware;” and
2) “If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.These two thoughts have served to protect me from most snake oil peddlers,
though I have been bit a time or two.Maybe it's my own flawed perception, but it seems to me that the hype, and
the dirty business tactics are practically everywhere you look on the web.I'm going to be spending this week unfollowing most of the internet
marketers I'm currently following on Twitter. I'm just getting tired of the
constant, unrelenting self-promotion at the expense of genuine connecting.
There are a couple I'll still follow because they offer genuine value and
keep self-promotion to a minimum, but most just don't get Twitter and their
noise ruins the Twitter experience for the rest of us.I know it's possible to build a good solid business on the web without
resorting to the “tricks” and “secrets” of the gurus. I know people who are
doing it. Sure they self-promote, but they do it with respect and with an
eye to providing genuine value in their relationships with both prospect and
customer.I'd love to see some kind of voluntary Internet based association for
businesses who commit to the highest of ethical standards and to willfully
correct themselves when they cross the line. -
On this whole issue of dirty business tricks I have been influenced by two
thoughts:
1) “Let the buyer beware;” and
2) “If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.These two thoughts have served to protect me from most snake oil peddlers,
though I have been bit a time or two.Maybe it's my own flawed perception, but it seems to me that the hype, and
the dirty business tactics are practically everywhere you look on the web.I'm going to be spending this week unfollowing most of the internet
marketers I'm currently following on Twitter. I'm just getting tired of the
constant, unrelenting self-promotion at the expense of genuine connecting.
There are a couple I'll still follow because they offer genuine value and
keep self-promotion to a minimum, but most just don't get Twitter and their
noise ruins the Twitter experience for the rest of us.I know it's possible to build a good solid business on the web without
resorting to the “tricks” and “secrets” of the gurus. I know people who are
doing it. Sure they self-promote, but they do it with respect and with an
eye to providing genuine value in their relationships with both prospect and
customer.I'd love to see some kind of voluntary Internet based association for
businesses who commit to the highest of ethical standards and to willfully
correct themselves when they cross the line.
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