Distrustful Company Content
What’s Real Anymore? The articles discussed the problems with customer generated feedback in response to blogs and the making of commercials for companies. It discussed the problems with having people who work for a company who generate “fake” feedback on websites and the anger when consumers find out about that fraud. There is also the problem with having actual consumers generate feedback and buzz called viral marketing. The main problem with real consumer generated feedback is sometimes people can generate bad buzz about a company, thus the reason why more and more companies feel safer having the people who work for them safely do it. Another main issue was that companies are taking personal information from their consumers for marketing research purposes and not telling the consumer they are doing so. Sometimes these companies even steal personal information from children under 13 without
any consent from parents since they are so vulnerable online and will give up personal information quite easily. These companies that are intentionally deceiving and stealing personal information especially from children are not shady unknown brands they are in fact well-known household brand names. The names of these companies include Wal-Mart, Chevy, AOL, Ruckus, Sony, MySpace, Xanga, Hershey, Malibu Rum, and Ms. Fields. These companies have not been behaving well from posting fake blogs, holding fake make your own commercial contests, and to letting 13 year olds and younger register on social networking sites. The lowest blow from these companies comes from getting information from kids because while it is an easily way for sleazy companies to get information out of unknowing little kids, sites like that also expose these kids to sex predators endangering the safety of the child and the family.
In my opinion these companies need to relax and roll with the punches if there is bad generated buzz online about their company. In fact instead of avoiding this information if they actually looked at it and tried to solve the problem with the consumer they might have less dissatisfied consumers in the first place. By hiring people to create blogs and rigging commercial contest they are losing trust from their actual consumers and future consumers. The world is an imperfect place, which includes companies, people know and accept this. They
know that sometimes sales people have a bad day and act rude and that sometimes a delivery gets damaged, lost, or broken because that’s life. They will not take to heart what they read on someone’s blog even if it is bad; they will simply compare it to their experiences. This is because people while they like advice from others also like to go out and experience things for themselves. A perfect example of this is the Ebert & Rupert movie reviews. Many people watch it and take into consideration what they say but a good majority of people will find that at least one if not many more movies that Ebert & Rupert say they do not like, they will end up liking. This is simply because everyone has different taste because we are a very diverse population with very diverse taste. Like that famous saying, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”
There are more than three dozen Fortune 500 companies producing blogs and with the constant need for marketing information and positive brand image among consumers these current issues with companies are not one that will go away anytime soon. The consumer needs to be aware of these issues and needs be skeptical of company blogs and the information their minors provide with social networking sites. Competition among competitors is fierce and some companies will do whatever it takes to beat out the competition which may mean deceiving consumers and illegally taking personal information from minors. Consumers need to foresee these current problems so that they can keep their personal information personal.