Johnnie Moore relates another shabby tale of a marketer posting spam comments in a highly inappropriate place. This time Katherine Coates Stone was on the receiving end. Her blog deals with post-partum depression and had some comments posted on it from some person touting a screening service for GPs.
Like most right-thinking communications consultants, I collect these cautionary tales (I’m calling them Cillit-isms for the time-being – see link for details if you’ve not heard the Cillit Bang story before) to help stop over-eager people in their tracks who want to talk about "viral blog campaigns" or ask questions like "how can we infiltrate blogs?".
If you find yourself in need of further evidence that such underhand shenanigans are not only inappropriate but dangerous to your brand health, help yourself to some of the mainstream media reporting of the aforementioned Cillit Bang story (and you can emphasise that the Business Week story means the story has achieved international reach):
- Business Week – 24 Oct – Spam On My Blog? Horrors! (requires registration)
- The Guardian – 22 Oct – The Hard Sell
- The Newcastle Chronicle & Journal – 20 Oct – Fictional character fails to amuse Net (no link available – pick it up (or ask a DB owning friend) from Factiva or Lexis Nexis if you need it)
- BBC Online – 11 Oct – Bang Blast
And don’t forget that the agencies involved (Young & Rubican / Cohn & Wolfe) are getting just as many brand-tarnishing mentions as Cillit Bang itself.
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