Comments on: Positive posts, negative posts, and bad PR

By: Yujie Chen

Yujie Chen — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 03:03:37 +0000

This is an ugly practice and the CIPRA effort is not going to have any significant impact. The root cause of this issue doesn’t stem from PR firms, it comes from the regular practice of government propaganda departments that have been doing this for a long time.

By: Will

Will — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:27:18 +0000

Hey, Magnus. I very much appreciate the shout-out. Cool podcast. As an ex-radio guy, I have to say, you definitely have the voice for it. (The swill oil thing, though…I really didn’t need to hear that.)

And you can just call me Will. Mr. Thief is my father.

By: Magnus

Magnus — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 03:20:38 +0000

Great post Mr. Thief, or Mr. Image. I think your point is well taken about how this doesn’t really get to the root of the problem. But what are you going to do when you don’t want to change the way you do things and only want to make it look like you’ve changed the way you do things.

Chris, that’s interesting that some companies pay people to post negative things about companies. WOW!

Anyway… I posted this up on our site and talked about it in our new podcast. M and Mx Radio. Hope you like it and enjoy the shout out!

By: M and Mx Radio: Image Thief and Swill Oil | MandMX.com

M and Mx Radio: Image Thief and Swill Oil | MandMX.com — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 16:01:20 +0000

[...] Image Thief Positive posts, negative posts, and bad PR. [...]

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 02:11:26 +0000

The ethics of the above are not an issue. Listening and engaging with customer complaints is fundamental to every business. Deleting negative comment in that context is not helpful to anyone.

The ethical dilemma for many businesses working in the PRC market is the systematic negative comment generated and paid for by competitors. Across a number of industries I’ve watched systematic campaigns of disinformation and defamation on particular brands and companies. You can only presume that these campaigns were funded by competitors.

What does a business do in this context? Addressing complete untruths or ‘customer’ complaints from non-existant customers is quite difficult from a PR context.

By: Jeremy Webb

Jeremy Webb — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:11:51 +0000

It’d be good to find one of the people — I’ve heard they are students — that are paid to write the comments. An interview would be a great idea for a blog post; I’d love to hear how it really works.

By: Shaan

Shaan — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 09:23:34 +0000

There’s also a problem of companies paying such agencies to post negative comments about competing brands. We attempted a listening campaign for one of our clients, but the data was unreliable thanks to many of the complaints being unfounded.