Brandjack News

News and commentary around the concept of brandjacking

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  • Twitter backlash on Tower Bridge trademark ruling

    By Quentin Langley


    For years Tom Armitage has been tweeting as @towerbridge. To be strictly accurate, he created ‘bot which tweets on that account. That means the ‘bot – a specially written program – turns up stories and matters of interest relating to Tower Bridge, London, and the immediate vicinity. The bridge opens and closes to allow river traffic to pass. This is all according to a publicly announced timetable, and Armitage’s ‘bot put out tweets announcing the movements of the bridge. All perfectly harmless.


    In past cybersquatting controversies, arguments have focussed on whether or not there was ‘passing off’. Did the fake web page or Twitter feed earn money by pretending to be someone else? Or was there genuine confusion? But Armitage was not doing it for the money, and never claimed to be representing the bridge or the associated exhibition.


    Nonetheless, the City of London has successfully evicted Armitage from the handle. He admits he got an e-mail about it and failed to respond. Perhaps if he had challenged the proposed eviction, he would have been successful.


    But shouldn’t the genuine Tower Bridge and its exhibition have ownership of the Tower Bridge Twitter handle?


    As with much in the digital world this raises issues for which there are no direct parallels off line. You would be committing an offence if you set up a hamburger restaurant called McDonalds and marketed it with golden arches and sesame buns. But many Twitter accounts are run non-commercially. Serving burgers under golden arches to your friends is not passing off.


    In reality, Armitage has no cause for complaint. (And it seems is not doing so, though others are taking up his cause). He only owned the Twitter handle because he acted promptly and registered it before the Corporation of London. Had he acted promptly when they challenged his ownership, he might well have kept it.


    For another view on the subject, click here

  • Ken breaks up with Barbie – class brandjack from Greenpeace

    by Quentin Langley

    Greenpeace has done it again. Strong narrative; good video; major news stunts. How long before Mattel folds?

  • Weiner’s wiener jacks the Congressman’s brand

    By Quentin Langley

    Anthony Weiner is a forthright and combative US Representative and has been considered a front-runner for the mayoralty of New York in 2013. His latest social media gaffe has brandjacked his reputation, and his evasive answers mean the story is unlikely to go away in the short term.

    The fact is that Weiner's Twitter feed briefly showed a photograph of a man in briefs, addressed to a young woman on Twitter. The most obvious explanation for this is that whoever sent it omitted the "d" prior to woman's Twitter handle, which would have made the post a direct message, visible only to her, instead.

    Weiner's immediate response was to claim that his account had been hacked, and he has been consistent on that since. But his normally clear and forthright style melts into ums, ahs, and evasive body language every time the issue is brought up. He refuses to be clear on any other matter related to the controversy. For example, he won't say that the picture is not of him, or even that it is, merely that he cannot say with "certitude" that it is not. Something about his public stance does not add up.

    If his account has been hacked, then a crime has been committed. The consequences are limited, in this case, to severe embarrassment for a previously rising politician. But it is easy to imagine tweets that could be falsely attrributed to a US Congressman that would cause market panics, or riots. Imagine, for example, a rumour that the US was about to sell gold, or repudiate public debt. Imagine a rumour that the US was about to withdraw all military support from Israel, or launch a nuclear attack on Iran. While such a false Tweet could be corrected in a few minutes, it is far from clear that the resultant damage could be so easily rectified. Surely a crime with such significant potential impact should be investigated? Weiner should at least assure us that he has himself investigated the source of the hack and can be sure it will not happen again. But, apparently, he does not want this crime investigated.

    So, it seems fairly likely, he is hiding something. It is possible that he did indeed sent the Tweet, perhaps intending it as a direct message. But if he is willing to lie about this, why is he so hesitant to lie with clarity and consistency, by denying that the picture is him, for example? Does he feel that this lie would be easier to expose?

    Perhaps he knows, or suspects, that the picture was sent by a member of his staff, perhaps someone authorised to tweet on his behalf? But that doesn't quite fit either. Why not cut loose the offender?

    The problem is, that Weiner looks like a man in trouble, and the media sharks smell blood. For all the talk about partisan media bias – and some media plainly exercise partisan motivations – the biggest bias any journalist will exercise is in favour of the good story. This man is in trouble, and every hack wants to be the one to break the story, and Weiner's political career.

    And the story is made just that little bit more embarrassing by his name. Americans pronounce it weener – just as they pronounce Wiener, as in Wiener schnitzel, a word they use as a slang term for penis. Weiner showing his wiener on Twitter is just too goood a story to miss. 

  • David H Koch brandjacked by bloggers

    By Quentin Langley

    Theatre is widely considered to be a good thing. People on the political left in particular tend to think that theatre is something which should be encouraged. Wealthy people who sponsor the arts no doubt believe that they derive many things from doing so – the ability to promote something they believe in; the opportunity to hobnob with artists; tax write offs. The benefits are legion, but somewhat insulating yourself against criticism from liberals would seem to be one of them. Apparently not.


    The David H Koch Theater was brandjacked last week with projections slamming the billionaire’s support for libertarian causes. He sent money to support Scott Walker’s campaign for governor of Wisconsin – though for all the talk of buying influence, it seems the two are not well acquainted. Koch is strongly opposed to Obamacare.


    It is a sad reflection on the quality of partisan debate that bloggers criticising Koch’s politics chose not engage on any issues, but merely cast aspersions on his motives. Unable to conceive that someone might have a principled objection to any policy they support, they instead allege the Koch brothers “try to derail health care reform because they’ve concluded that it will cut into their profit margins”.


    The actual brandjack, though seems to have been carried out with some style and humour, and is a worthy inclusion in Brandjack News.


    Click here for some more.

  • Branding Bashar – how do people believe he is a reformer?

    By Quentin Langley

    How, exactly, did Bashar Assad manage to brand himself as a reformer? Perhaps it was the parallels with Rajiv Ghandi. 

    Bashar and Rajiv were both accidental heirs. In both cases, they inherited the dynastic power of the family because a sibling was killed in an accident. In both cases, they had been educated abroad. Both came to power with high hopes from western observers.

    But here the parallels break down. Rajiv Gandhi inherited control of his family's tame political party, but had to win election as Prime Minister of India. For all its dynastic power, Congress has to compete in open elections with its rivals. Syria's Baath Party does not permit rivals. And Rajiv Gandhi pursued genuine reforms. Bashar Assad has not done so.

    I confess, I was one of those fooled by Bashar. As late as 2005, I hoped that his dismissal of the head of Syria's intelligence service could have advented a wider purge of the Stalinists, and a move to genuine reform. I was wrong and, by 2006, was calling for active western intervention to destabilise his regime.

    But why did western governments – including both the Bush and Obama administrations – continue to believe that Bashar was on the point of liberal reforms long after he had promised much, but continually delivered very little. Syria's record on human rights continues to be abysmal. It continues to actively promote malign forces in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon. There is probably no country which combines such blatant repression at home with active hostility to western interests abroad in such great measure.

    And yet, western governments still seem to hope that Bashar will prove to be a reformer. With a decade's worth of evidence in, this is obviosly fales.

    That he speaks English, was educated in London, and speaks of democracy and human rights should not be enough. Some measure of action should have been taken years ago. He is no refomer, and it is monstrously naive to think that he might become one.

     

     

  • Brandjack insurance is now available

    By Quentin Langley


    So, now you can get insured against being brandjacked. The implication is that it mostly protects you against a staff brandjack, rather than aggressive external brandjacks by groups like Greenpeace.


    The risks of staff brandjacks are certainly considerable. There was the Vodafone issue, when the official Vodafone UK Twitter feed was used to send the message “Vodafoneuk is fed up with dirty homo’s and is going after beaver” or the Virgin flight crew Facebook chat which cast doubt on the safety of the aircraft and suggested Virgin customers are ‘chavs’.


    But external brandjacks can be just as deadly. Some people have estimated that the United Breaks Guitars issue knocked $180 million off United’s share price. Or think of the way Nestlé backed down on sourcing its palm oil in just eight weeks.


    Set against the scale of the damage a brandjack can do to your reputation, even the upper end estimate of $10 million premiums looks modest, but what benefit could the same organisation get from investing the same money in improving its social media strategy and profile.


    If you have strong relationships in social media, you can resist brandjacking campaigns. Facebook has been the target of a Greenpeace campaign to ‘unfriend coal’, yet it has not only resisted but fought back – pointing out that Greenpeace too uses a datacenter powered by coal.


    Insurance is great, but all it does is cover you against loss. It doesn’t actually improve your standing in social media. That takes investment in training and internal communications.


    Anyone who wants to spend $10 million on that should let me know.


    Read more in PR Daily.

  • How intelligent are sponsored links?

    I was just reading an article in the Wall Street Journal by Peggy Noonan titled "The Speech Obama hasn't Given" about American policy on Libya. As is the way with newspapers, I am a registered user (indeed, subsrciber) so the Journal knows who is reading the article. The sponsored links at the foot of the article included offering Michelle Obama's speech to the 2008 Democratic Convention. Okay, so they picked up the words "Obama" and "Speech" in the headline. A second link offered information on Noonan Syndrome, a type of dwarfism, from which Peggy Noonan does not suffer.

    I cannot claim to be terribly impressed by the targetting here.

  • 27% support Gaddafi

    By Quentin Langley


    Libya has no developed polling industry and given the long history of violence by the Gaddafi regime it is doubtful that people in Benghazi, let alone Tripoli, would given honest answers to polling. So, whence derives my eerily precise figure? I can assure you it is based on years of solid scientific research.


    Before I explain the research, I invite you to recall the statements of Muammar Gaddafi and Saif al Islam Gaddafi. They claimed that the young people engaged in the uprising against Gaddafi were on drugs: that they had been actively drugged by a coalition of the US, the UK and al Qaeda. Yep, those guys are all really friendly behind the scenes.


    Click here to keep reading this article.

  • 27% support Gaddafi

    Libya has no developed polling industry and given the long history of violence by the Gaddafi regime it is doubtful that people in Benghazi, let alone Tripoli, would given honest answers to polling. So, whence derives my eerily precise figure? I can assure you it is based on years of solid scientific research.

    Before I explain the research, I invite you to recall the statements of Muammar Gaddafi and Saif al Islam Gaddafi. They claimed that the young people engaged in the uprising against Gaddafi were on drugs: that they had been actively drugged by a coalition of the US, the UK and al Qaeda. Yep, those guys are all really friendly behind the scenes.

    Now look at footage of the pro-Gaddafi demonstraters: waving pictures of Gaddafi, waving the green flag, huge delirious grins on their faces. They are the ones who looked like they were on drugs. But they were not. They were suffering from a recognised mental illness: Stockholm Syndrome. It is from this that the 27% figure derives. The FBI has established over several decades that approximately 27% of hostages suffer from Stockholm Syndrome.

    There are three conditions necessary for Stockholm Syndrome:

    • The hostage taker has to threaten the victim’s life and then spare it. Syndrome sufferers come  to view  this as the hostage taker ‘giving’ them life.
    • The hostage has to endure isolation, with only the captor’s viewpoint available.
    • The captor has to exercise some degree of ‘kindness’ towards the hostage.

    When you think about, all these apply in the case of a sufficiently tyrannical regime. Sufficiently violent governments always threaten their citizens, and frequently kill people merely to cow the remaining population. Through censorship, governments isolate their people from external viewpoints. It is very notable that the Arab uprising began in the tourist cities of Tunis, Cairo and Alexandria, where people are less isolated. Governments always exercise apparent ‘kindness’ by monopolising some essential services such as police protection and education.

    The spread of the Internet and international news channels such as Al Jazeera have played an enormous role in breaking down this isolation.

    Fortunately, Stockholm Syndrome breaks down very quickly. Within a few years of Hitler’s defeat there were only tiny numbers of Nazis left in Germany. When Gaddafi is gone, there will only be small numbers of his loyalists, but right now he has a substantial number of supporters who are, quite literally, mentally deranged.

     

  • Revolution brandjacks government

    By Quentin Langley

    So far, two Arab governments have fallen. Libya is crucial. Gaddaffi has responded much more brutally than either Ben Ali or Mubarak. It will be a terrible message to other dictators if this means he stays in office. There needs to be another message: that he cannot now go into a comfortable retirement. There need to be consequences for his actions. I am fairly indifferent to whether it is the Milosevic option (trial at The Hague), the Saddam option (trial in Libya) or the Mussolini option (that the mob should manage things themselves).

    But revolution needs to be the fallback position. Revolutions rarely work in the medium term. The French, Russian and Iranian revolutions, for example, replaced dreadful governments with something even worse. The more violent a revolution is, the less likely it is to produce an improvement in government. Once it is established that the people can overthrow governments it gets very tempting for the losers of free and fair election to take to the streets, undermining both democracy and development.

    It is far better that governments should reform internally. As Paul Wolfowitz said today on Sky News, "I still believe that if Mubarak had started to reform ten years ago he could have left office as a hero and not as a goat".

    Perhaps the experience of seeing what happens when we mistake stagnation for stability will cause the West to look again at its strategy. Obama should never have abandoned the Bush Freedom Agenda.

    But can we realistically hope that any Arab countries will reform? Well, yes we can, and some have been doing so. Jordan began on this path in 2005 and only reversed course in 2009. Egypt also appeared to begin the process in 2005, though this was probably not serious, even when George Bush was still in power. Kuwait, Morocco and Lebanon are all rated as 'partially free' by Freedom House, whereas all other Arab countries, along with Iran, are 'not free'.

    Kuwait has been undergoing a steady process of reform. In 1998 naturalised citizens were given the vote for the first time. In 2005 women got the vote. These are significant changes. They do not go far enough. For example, citizens need to be naturalised for 30 years to vote. More than half the country's citizens cannot vote, and only one third of the population are citizens. The principle, however, has been established. Naturalised citizens can now vote, and reducing the waiting period is probably a smaller step than conceding the principle in the first place. If Kuwait wishes to be accepted as a democratic constitutional monarchy, the royal family will need to withdraw from politics.

    Morocco too, seems to have the potential for gradual transition to freedom and democracy. If I were advising the king, I would suggest establishing meaningful local government with real democratic control. Follow that with radical devolution and then a democratically elected parliament and a ceremonial monarch.