Brandjacked: What happens when you don’t own your own name
November 21, 2008 by Colleen Coplick
Filed under Social Media
Motrin. Exxon. American Airlines. These are just a few of the great big giant brands which have been “twitter-jacked” in the past year, and that doesn’t count the sheer volume of “fake” celebrities, politicians and others who have had their names co-opted. Anyone remember Sarah Silverman??
Like I discussed in Personal Brand or Reputation, if you don’t already own your Twitter name, your domain name, your facebook name – you name it – you run the serious risk of your name being taken over by someone with less than virtuous ambitions.
Take Shaquille O’Neal. he recently took back his own Twitter account because someone had registered ShaquilleONeal and was impersonating him. Through some savvy communications management, and Shaq creating The_Real_Shaq on the heels of discovering the impostor.
On the flip side of that was the whole Vancouver mayoral politics twitter debacle, that got exposed in the local paper, and blew up all over the local blogs and Twitter streams.
@Motrin is just yet one more in a long series of brand jackings. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – go out now and register or buy all of the iterations of your name, your brand, the misspellings, and the negative connotations of each.
Without them, you run serious PR risks.
(image source: Wikimedia Commons)
Great post Colleen, and one I’ve been preaching for some time now. In addition to securing your domain name, your social network names, etc., I’ve even been showing companies the risk of allowing their brand to be hijacked for use in groups on a variety of social networks. In most cases these groups have been set up by well intentioned members, but then the company (membership organization, alumni association, etc.) has lost control. Better to jump in now and gain control of your identity then to wait until your reputation has been sullied and/or thousands of members join thinking they’re affiliated with the real thing. Could prove a PR nightmare later on.
Whether or not you want to engage in social media, every business should at least create accounts on Facebook and Twitter to claim your company name. If you don’t want to participate at that time, just post one message: “At this time, we are not posting to this site. We appreciate your interest. Please contact us at ….”
Totally agree – and it is about creating the perception as well as the reality. Of course you can’t speak and listen to each customer if you have thousands but you can create the perception of listening