Yahoo Chatrooms, Advertisers Go Offline - Responsibility? What the Heck is That?
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Companies cannot be so far out of touch that they do not know where they are advertising. As we all know in this day and age, a quick check of the referer file in their web hosting stats shows the precise URL where any visitor traffic came from, including the link from another site.
Further, I am sure Pepsi, and the other advertisers that backed out, as well as Yahoo, have a plethora of computer science graduates from leading universities working in the IT departments. They too would know from where traffic is coming, and in Yahoos case, the chat room pages (including the offending names) were a traceable part of their database. In the rush for the almighty dollar, corporate responsibility is being left behind and swept under the rug. The "we didn't know" excuse is tired and passe. I expect that response from my 11 year old, not from mature adults in the corporate world with a mass of technological tools at their disposal.
That these size companies could only find that excuse also shows there are problems in headquarters with controlling their brand name. Now I am no Pepsi, Georgia Pacific, or Yahoo, but I do market for some of the top name consumer products in the country. I deal with everything from home alarm systems, mortgage lenders, satellite television companies, and apparel brands. Whenever I am offered the opportunity, I need to tell these companies or their publishers where their ads will be placed by providing a URL where it is to be displayed.
I also work with many small and medium businesses worldwide, and these companies take great steps to maintain their site quality. My international clients are a bit more protective than their US counterparts, but most all of them could never honestly say they didn't know. In my eyes, this quality usually makes the client a much better one to do business with as well.
Large corporations are exposed to bad press and harm to reputation on many technological fronts: a disenfranchised employee writing a blog post, the blogging community itself, user forums, and message boards. That can put a severe crunch in the image and revenue a company can generate. There was a lock company that enjoyed great success online and had built a huge user community through their website. The users evetually found out that the company's guaranteed-unbreakable lock could be broken by one blow from a hammer, and the backlash put them out of business. It took no time at all, especially considering how long it took to build the business and grow the user base.
Bloated corporations have the resources to protect their brand name but do a very poor job of it in the online realm. It may be their slow acceptance of the web as a viable and valuable tool, or their greed which allows them to buy $100 thousand dollar suites in sports arenas like it is a drop in the bucket. That greed may keep them from paying the salaries for a few newly created job positions, like a "Corporate Brand Emissary."
Moving into the future, those Fortune 500 companies who employ people to protect their brand name and reputation (or hire firms designed to protect these companies on line like "Virtual bodyguards") will do more to add return on investment to the bottom line. Their work will be much more potent than placing advertising on a bunch of random chat rooms filled with people pretending to be other people.
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