I wrote a few days ago about how companies who are not ready to lose control should stay out of the whole realm of social media. I will add quickly to this that not only should they not try to add social media public relations to their marketing mix, but they should stay away from it altogether.
Chris Thilik and Mack Collier both post excellent analyses of Paramount’s latest bone-headed move to issue a cease-and-disist order to The Movie Blog’s ISP, resulting in his site going down without receiving so much as a two-line email in advance.
This is a blogger who said nothing but positive things about the project in question, and even complied with a request to remove other pictures from his site. And yet, this is how they chose to reward the free publicity simply because they didn’t control it.
I won’t bother expounding on this, since both Mack and Chris have said everything I could have said and more, but I urge you to read both of them and treat this case as a case study in how not to deal with bloggers.
Having worked with heavily litigious clients in the past, I can say with authority that lawyers can be both the best friend and the sworn enemy of communication. However, in most of the cases I’ve encountered, lawyers do not understand the communications process any more than we understand commercial litigation, and when legal outranks communications, they have a lot of potential to completely screw things up, and end up biting the hand that feeds them.
