I’m thinking specifically of clients and companies who want to manipulate ratings and review sites by posting reviews from fake customers. It happens, we know it, and despite strong warnings and protests, some companies still think it’s a good idea. I actually refuse to work with companies if they choose to do this sort of thing.

With the FTC’s rules, we can point out that this behavior isn’t just wrong — it may be illegal, and can result in stiff punishment. A company that has no problem setting aside their scruples may think twice when there’s a financial penalty on the line.

At WOMMA we have an annual Living Ethics blog where we collect comments on the ethics of the word of mouth and social media industries. We would love for you to contribute.

The blog is here: http://bit.ly/i30A02

Thanks!
Pat

[Disclosure: I work for WOMMA.]

I realize there is a lot of gray area around disclosure, but if it’s PR agency to agency, it’s usually implied all over your profile that you also work in PR. If it’s the case of blasting your client’s competitors without disclosing your client relationship, that’s something altogether different.

For some clarification, I was inspired to write this post after a lot of experience (in multiple roles) where it was evident (to internal folks) that the person writing a comment was a competitor or some other rogue sort of stakeholder… Even though I always advise to address public comments on face value, this really is a nasty business and I wanted to get more awareness going around the fact that this nasty business is technically illegal and wholly unethical.

Any “strategist” who advises a client to post negative comments about their competitors should not to be considered reputable — that’s mostly what I was trying to get at :)

As I was reading your post, I started thinking… how does one define a competitor, along the lines of your last question, “how much material is required for a material relationship”? For companies, it’s pretty clear; it’s another company that offers similar products/services in the same or a fairly similar space. For some businesses, though – for example, PR agencies – how far does one go to define the “universe of competitors”? What about mainstream media outlets who take other outlets to task on their own pages … and so on.

Btw, I’m not making any judgements here… just asking the question.

I suppose the ideal option is that one would stay away from negative sharing altogether… it just seems like such a nasty thing to do. But we don’t live in an ideal world, do we?

People talk about “social media” like it is this new landscape with no rules that we need to establish laws, rules, ethics and morals for. If you are of this mindset then I believe you take the phrase “Social Media” too seriously. “Social Media” is a new buzzword, but it just refers to something that has been around for a long time. It is called communication and public interaction. And was around well before Mark Zuckerberg or the Twitter guys were even a gleam in their parents eyes.

Don’t try to establish new rules and guidelines (and no they are not needed because the “platform” is new). Review existing guidelines and remind people of common sense when it comes to their company and competitor interactions. If you already know when to disclose relationships (employer and competitor) when dealing with communication (radio, television, print, email, anyplace) then you will know that social media is just another place where it is common sense to disclose your business relationships. If you didn’t know how to ethically handle yourself before “social media” then maybe you should not be using it.

Patrick Allmond