The Jeremy Schoemaker (Shoemoney) situation was very different in 2 key ways.

1) Shoemoney had an excellent blog and a HUGE army of dedicated followers established. Sugars had/has neither. Brad had to start his effort from scratch and dedicate significant resources (all of his marketing resources and focus, according to his own internal memo). He will need to continue to allocate time, energy and money to do battle with detractors over his own name.

2) Shoemaker was the victim of an instantly recognizeable fraud that stirred outrage among his followers. Brad Sugars is in the opposite situation. Whether the points are legitimate or not, he’s the one being accused of wrongdoing and he is facing the criticism of the outraged commenters. In the Shoemaker scenario, imho, he has more in common with the picture-posting offender than with Shoemaker.

This is a franchise relations problem, and one can’t solve legitimate relationship problems with technical trickery. The Brad Sugars plan to flood the search engines with positive propaganda could have a superficial appearance of success, but, in my opinion, is just exascerbating the problem. How do you think the current franchisees feel about all their marketing dollars and corporate focus being diverted to building Brad Sugars (not ActionCOACH’s) name on an ongoing basis?

If the Shoemoney situation was truly parallel, the outrage and enthusiasm of 1000+ ActionCOACH franchisees would have overwhelmed the detractors. Unfortunately for Brad, this campaign to save his personal name and quell dissent (rather than franchisee success) will just create more unhappy franchisees and the need for more technical trickery.

I have full respect to Brad Sugars. IMO, his campaign to push negative remarks and comments down is effective and a must do. Brad practices reputation management well, although he can do it a bit more effective.

I like the reputation management practice by one of the A-list blogger, Jeremy Schoemaker (Shoemoney). The case: His photo holding a check was used illegally for an ad campaign that is proven to be a scam, as if he was endorsing the cause. He requested bloggers (through paid and non-paid blogging methods) to become his aide in promoting the scams and his non-involvement in the so-called “money-making system.”

We can’t control what people have said… All we can do is to practice reputation management to keep investors and customers well-informed (with the right information, that is…)

My 2 cents.

Ivan
FranchiseNote.com

Trying to hide the negative blogs behind “helping charities” Nice idea Brad.

Obviously now you can tell they are cooked as hell… otherwise they wouldn’t need to combat the blogs.

Good deads are done in the light, while evil is always concealed.

Now they’re trying to conceal their trickery and the negative blogs by starting this new “charity” campaign. I think their wisest move at this point would be to clean up their act, stop lying about their franchise numbers, and stop selling these “franchises” to people who are unfit to own them.

Good job.

I know lots of ex-franchisees.

JL