It seems that ad agency Warren Kremer Paino Advertising (WKPA) has filed suit against a blogger by the name of Lance Dutson, “for copyright infringement, defamation and trade libel and injurious falsehood.” Why? Because the State of Maine hired them to do their tourism advertising and he was outspoken about how they were wasting money doing the wrong things – he critiqued their marketing strategy.
“some big company in New York with no ties to the state, pissing away tax money.” – Lance Dutson
So, why is this important? As Steve Rubel points out, the last thing you want to do is sue a blogger if you’re a big company. The negative ramifications so far outweigh the positives that it just doesn’t make sense. WKPA will have to live with their online identity (through search engines) being negative for many years. They didn’t need to let this happen.
Corporate Lesson Learned #1:
Trying to silence blogger’s voices on the web is search engine suicide.
Corporate Lesson Learned #2:
Get your own blog, that way you have a platform to answer back on in the same medium.
May 5, 2006 at 12:50 am
You do raise an important point. A company must not try to silence a blogger, this will only light his/her fire, better yet a company create their own blog to join the conversation. Listening to the conversation and joining it is very important.
Good points!
-Chris