Tom H. C. Anderson - More Than Market Research

As you know Anderson Analytics uses text analytics in order to analyze and understand text data in not just surveys and focus groups, but also from discussion boards and blogs on the web. The latter is an excellent way for companies to monitor and understand what people are saying about their products, brands and competition.

There’s a saying among internet savvy programmers/hackers that “The Internet is Serious Business”, but it means exactly the opposite, that you shouldn’t take the Internet too seriously. It’s not “real” after all, and you can’t always control what people say about you and your brand. This is advice I generally give my corporate clients when they are concerned about what may be said about them online.

As important as corporate brands are, our personal brands (our names), are even more important to most of us. There have been many public service announcements recently urging students not to bully each other online. Interestingly, online bullying is apparently not something that is limited to youth.

Today when I logged onto facebook.com I noticed a ‘twitter’ from my MENG (Marketing Executive Networking Group) colleague and friend Laura Levitan which said simply “Laura is shocked at how mean grown professionals can be….”.

For those of you who don’t know Laura, she is an uber networker who strongly believes in networking virtues such as “always offer to help”, “give selflessly”, and “don’t forget people”. You can read more about Laura in this Fast Company blog post by Wendy Marx. Suffice it to say she is very well connected and has thousands of senior contacts in marketing both on Linkedin and facebook.

I asked Laura what had happened. Apparently some folks put up a group on facebook (that has just been removed) that was entitled “Who is Laura Levitan and why is she trying to friend me on facebook”. People that Laura didn’t know posted some really ugly things about her i.e. T-shirts with “I slept with Laura Levitan”. Amidst it all was a heartwarming post by Laura’s 14 year old son defending his mother.

While I do believe that for brands, it’s better to be talked about even negatively, than not talked about at all, this doesn’t really hold true for or personal brands. I sympathized with Laura and can only imagine how hurtful it would have been reading about yourself in that way on the Internet.