Public Relations and Internet Ethics

Public Relations and Internet Ethics Public Relations and Internet Ethics In 2006, CNN Money reported in “PR firm admits it's behind Wal-Mart blogs” that two websites appearing to be grassroots efforts in support of the company were actually written by employees of the PR firm Edelman. The firm, which represents Wal-Mart, posted on their website that they were responsible for the pro-Wal-Mart blogs. The admission came as a response to suspicions that Wal-Mart was somehow involved with the blogs. Similar to the Wal-Mart blogging scandal is the fake blog, or “flog,” created in 2006 promoting Sony’s PSP. As MediaPost reports in the article “Sony Confesses To Creating 'Flog,' Shutters Comments,” Sony used the viral marketing firm Zapitoni to create a blog dedicated to the PSP prior to the Christmas season. The website proved suspicious to visitors by featuring over-the-top wording and filtering words like “viral” and “campaign” from the comments. Sony eventually admitted to creating the blog with Zapitoni and disabled commenting on the blog. While “flogs” may be successful in creating buzz around a product, deception may not be the best way to garner attention from consumers. Fortune magazine’s 2006 article “Corporate blogging: Wal-Mart's fumbles” discusses the growing trend of corporate blogging, and says how to make a corporate blog succeed. While Wal-Mart’s faux-support blog is a bad example of how to run a corporate blog, other companies such as Sun Microsystems and Dell have fared much better. Sun’s blog is actually written by its CEO, Jonathan Schwartz and offers a mix of technical jargon and everyday banter. Dell’s blog aided in the company’s lithium ion battery recall by helping customers when phone lines were too jammed. The article concludes by saying that corporate blogging is a great way to make consumers aware of the inner-workings of a company. “'Puppets' Emerge as Internet's Effective, and Deceptive, Salesmen,” a 2006 Washington Post article, discusses questionably ethical online practices like sock-puppeting, meat-puppeting, trolling, and more. Sock-puppeting and meat-puppeting include passing a fictional character off as a real person through the internet, as was done on the Facebook social networking website by the music sharing website Ruckus. By creating a fake profile page for the fictional Brody Ruckus, the company was able to acquire hundreds of thousands of email addresses used to promote their website. Other techniques are also used to create internet buzz, either by posting positive reviews through shills or negative ones through trolling. While these and other practices successfully create attention for products and services, they fall into a legal grey area. The consumers who fall into the traps these practices create may not be receptive or forgiving to companies who use deceitful tactics to gain access to their personal contact information. CNetNews.com posted a story about AOL’s botched AOL Research Site, an attempt to aid academics which made users’ search data publicly available. Search terms were listed with only an IP address as identification, but privacy advocates such as the Center for Democracy and Technology claimed that individuals could be identified based off of their search history and that AOL violated privacy by making such information public. However, others still claim that what AOL was attempting to do is good for researchers interested in information retrieval and search query strings. The article mentions that although search data could be useful, making it available to marketers and insurance companies could be considered a breach of privacy and could be used inappropriately. A Sony PSP, as raved about in a “flog.” An example of a MySpace profile page. Adult users were able to hack the site and gain access to profiles of users under age 16. The Hershey’s store in New York City’s Times Square. Hershey Foods was fined by the FTC for not requiring users under the age of 13 to obtain parental consent before accessing their websites. Chevy Tahoe SUV’s were the subject of socially aware, fan-created online advertisements. A ConsumerAffairs.com article titled “MySpace Glitch Gives Hackers Teen Data” discusses how social networking website MySpace faced criticism for allowing hackers to view what were intended to be “private” profiles. MySpace made profiles of users under the age of 16 private, an attempt restrict access to those profiles by people over the age of 18. However, people were able to hack through privacy codes and gain access to the private profiles, and numerous instructional videos were made available online, detailing how to hack the codes. MySpace created the privacy codes in attempts to prevent sex offenders from meeting underage people through the website, but perhaps the best protection from shady characters may be to simply leave personal information personal and keep it off of online profiles. In a violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), social networking website Xanga allowed users under the age of 13 to register for the site without parental consent. In an article from MSNBC, Xanga is said to have been fined $1 million by the Federal Trade Commission for the violation. By allowing young children to sign up for the website without parental consent, parents were likely unaware that their children were posting personal information online and opening themselves up to abuse from potential online predators. Hershey Foods and Mrs. Fields Cookies similarly violated COPPA by not obtaining parental consent before obtaining personal information from children using their websites. An article in The Register (UK) says that the companies were also in violation of not stating what information was collected and how said information was used. Malibu Caribbean Rum faced criticism for an online contest to promote their Banana Rum. The company held a contest offering consumers the chance to win $25,000 or a banana plantation in the tropics for creating a YouTube video for the product to the tune of the Banana Boat song. An article on MediaBuyerPlanner.com states that contestants felt the contest was rigged because finalists were never announced publicly, creating an unfair advantage for the winner. Malibu claimed that the contest was fair, but the public relations agency behind the contest, The Thomas Collective, distributed contest information that was not consistent with the contest rules states online. Losing contest entrants voiced their harsh views of Malibu following the contest, including one 6-minute video posted on YouTube accusing the company of conspiracy. The New York Times featured an article titled “Chevy Tries a Write-Your-Own-Ad Approach, and the Potshots Fly,” detailing a viral marketing approach which resulted in some negative PR for the company. In 2006 Chevrolet launched a website allowing users to create their own 30-second spot for the 2007 Chevy Tahoe. However, rather than creating odes to the SUV, some users chided the vehicle for poor gas mileage and preached global warming. Melisa Tezanos, a Chevrolet spokeswoman, said that the negative ads were expected given the medium, and users who created some of the advertisements posted comments about Chevrolet’s apparent social consciousness.