Fionn Downhill – Digital Shenanigans

As the school year starts to wind down, many college students are looking for summer work that doesn’t involve fast food or menial labor. Many students see an internship as a way of testing the waters in a specific field while others want the chance to earn a little money while doing something related to their studies. Some of them may find a spot with Elixir.

Elixir has an ongoing internship program that is currently looking for students to work on web and content development in the summer of 2010. The program is designed to offer students the opportunity to explore the field of internet marketing while gaining real world business experience. The internships offer students a chance to apply theories from their studies while learning what it means to operate as part of a business team.

For the past several years, Elixir has worked closely with Arizona State University to identify students with the background knowledge, professionalism, and enthusiasm necessary to succeed in an internet workplace. Students report that their experiences with ElixirInteractive taught them invaluable lessons about working in a professional environment as well as providing insights into the varied world of internet marketing.

I am writing this post to warn anybody who receives a solicitation from this company to manage their online reputation to examine the situation very carefully. Good online repuation management companies are hard to find and they do not need to send out unsolicited e-mails they are busy enough and do not have to resort to spam.   On the 4th of March I received an e-mail from this Company offering me their Reputation Management Repair services as I had a complaint on complaints board.com. This company RepSpinner are based in Australia I decided to simply ignore them.  Interestingly enough complaints board is also an Australian company.

Here is the solicitation e-Mail. The report on complaints board was created on the 3rd of March.

Hello,

I noticed your business is listed on Complaints Board at (link removed).
This is showing when people do a Google search for your company, which
would be affecting your sales. I actually work at a company where we
help people eliminate reports on Complaints Board and any negative
publicity they have from search engines. This way, your potential
customers would find only positive references and good results about
your company when they search for your business on search engines like
Google.

More details about what we do at
http://www.repspinner.com/reputation-management-services.html. I hope
to hear from you soon.

Best regards,

Jessica Edwards
Project Manager & Marketing
RepSpinner

The first clue here that the report is fake is when they describe the owner as a man when clearly I am a woman. Notwithstanding the other rubbish about the owner being out sick etc that is the biggest giveaway.

Yesterday my office received a phone call asking us if we were aware how bad our reputation was on Google. We did some further investigation.  I found  another e-mail in my junk e-mail from the persistent Jessica this time advising me of the help they could give to remove my RipOff Report.

Here is that solicitation e-mail. The ROR was filed on the 2nd of March and Jessica contacted us on the 3rd.

From: jessicae@repspinner.com [mailto:jessicae@repspinner.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2010 1:32 AM
To: Fionn Downhill
Subject: Report I Found About Your Company [On Ripoff Report]

Hello,

I noticed your business is listed on Ripoff Report at http(link removed) This is showing when people do a Google search for your company, which would be affecting your sales. I actually work at a company where we help people eliminate reports on Ripoff Report and any negative publicity they have from search engines. This way, your potential customers would find only positive references and good results about your company when they search for your business on search engines like Google.

More details about what we do at
http://www.repspinner.com/reputation-management-services.html. I hope to hear from you soon.

Best regards,

Jessica Edwards
Project Manager & Marketing

The ROR is a cut and paste of the original complaints board complaint. Today there are more complaints on complaints board site. One talks about us being a Gym and the other refers to our outbound telemarketing services which we have never used and our SEO guarantee which we never give. They refer to us charging credit cards without permission. Every credit card we have ever charged is backed up with an approved Invoice.

Rather than take this online today I called the US number on their website 305 829 6632. The lady was at first helpful and talked about Jessica being based out of their Australia office. When I honestly explained the situation to her she said her Company would never do such a things. I explained that I had a clear trail of events that was extremely suspicious and I wanted her to contact her company in Australia on my behalf.  I wished to discuss it with them in a logocial and constructive way.  I advised her that if she did not help I would have no alternative but to create this post to protect our good name and reputation. She asked me to hold. She came back and said and I quote, “this company has nothing to do with me, this is private number, people keep calling it asking me about these people and I know nothing about them. Do not call me back this is a private phone and it  is waking up my sleeping baby” Then she hung up.

The biggest concern I have with these fake reports is that they somehow seem to be automated. The information is so random it has either been created by a careless human or a robot.   How many more innocent companies are these fake reports damaging. The reports are created to cause maximum harm to these innocent companies. Nothing published about us in these reports is true I can prove it. How many of these companies then buy RepSpinner’s services. The reason people do this is because they can, no other good reason. In an offline world practices like this would be considered fruad and if RepsSpinner did create the fake reports it would be called racketeering but in the online space thanks to the authority Google bestows on these scam consumer affairs sites people can do this.  These sites allow anybody to post anything without any verification.  The very minimum that should happen is that the poster should have to prove they were a customer.   The Company accused should be allowed to defend themselves without having to post stupid rebuttals which only make the problem worse by adding more content to the fake post.  I see it every day and I feel so desperately sorry for the small companies who have been damaged by these practices with no finance or other resources to defend themselves.

RepSpinner obviously does’nt do their research very well targetting a company such as ours and I hope this post is a warning to any other innocent company who recieves their solicitions to tell them to go to hell.

I am fuly aware that by publishing this our good name and reputation may come under further attack by the unscrupulous indivuals who posted those fake reports in the first place whoever they are.  I am okay with that because if my story prevents one person being scammed then its worth it.

My take on the difference between online and traditional PR and the need for the two disciplines to work together to provide better service to the clients.

This is an excellent presentation by Dana Todd the CMO of Newsforce.   They offer Press Release Optimization tools and paid placement on premium news sites.  This presentation is a helpful guide to managing online PR.  Today in 2010 despite the startling statistics Dana shares in this presentation I am still amazed at how far behind the curve tradtional PR agencies are in offering these services.  I am even more amazed that their clients are not demanding it.  I spoke to a fortune 500 company  this week and none of their PR is released online.  They have a major problem with their online reputation and their very large traditional PR agency offers no online services.  Elixir Interactive offers online reputation managent training to traditional PR agencies but have very few takers.  Are they just going to wait until they go out of business before they embrace this new world which has been around for 12 years now.

Today I had a call with an old friend in the UK.  She is off to the Cheltenham Gold Cup festival next week.   It brought back many happy memories of Spring in the UK and many memories (if a little fuzzy at times) of days spent at the Chelthenham, Ascot and Wimbledon events.  I miss spring more than any other season.  We get hot and hotter in Arizona although this year we did have an abundance of rain.   There is something beautiful about the end of winter and the promise that Spring brings.  But I digress back to Cheltenham.  This beautiful regency town in the Cotswolds less than 100 miles from London is England at its very best.  You can find out more about this town at the Cheltenham tourism website.  I hope to get back to the UK this year and hopefully in the summer.  Rain and all its still one of my favovite trips.

A company has a product. Employees sell that product. Companies, big companies such as Starbucks and Dominoes Pizza, have been called upon to defend themselves and to save the reputation of their brand, their services and their products, and their own moral fiber, because once something happens, it happens forever. This is becoming more of the case norm, as widespread media is not contained to the newspapers nor the nightly news anymore, but it is in the hands of the public. A public who may go online and post reviews, articles, and blogs, which reach millions through their computers each and everyday.

 When a company deals with the public, one aspect that they may face is that all of the people may not be pleased all of the time. And also what stands true, is that mistakes may be made. This is what happened with the Toyota car company. Currently, a large number of Toyotas are being recalled and reevaluated for safety issues. The Toyota company conducted the massive recall of their vehicles, when it was discovered that the gas pedal sticks, causing great concern not only to the owners of the vehicles, but the company itself. U.S. Transportation Secretary, Ray LaHood, stated last week, that the company was pressured by the U.S. Government to recall those vehicles, and now the Toyota company has stepped up to take full and complete responsibility for the safety of their customers. Which they should do of course.

The Toyota company would have done well to look after their own online reputation management, monitoring today’s platforms for modern media dissemination of information. To do this a company should keep track of the happenings on such popular social sites such as Facebook or Twitter. Even a company without the popularity that Toyota has, will benefit from the diligence taken to ensure that their brands and products are not receiving this negative mass press. Online reputation management involves protecting one’s brand and protecting one’s own reputation. When companies find that they have neither the time nor the skill to do just that, is it time to hire specialists in the field of online reputation management. The services that are offered will not only protect one’s company today, but far into the future as well.