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Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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ExxonMobil situation shows “brandjacking” is for real

ExxonMobil’s experience in the Twittersphere should serve as a wake-up call for organizations dragging their feet when it comes to paying attention to the social media space. It took only three days from the first time a tweet appeared from a Twitter account called ExxonMobilCorp to capture the attention of mainstream media and investment analysts.

Shel Holtz

This interest in ExxonMobil’s participation in the conversation was certainly amplified by recent coverage of Comcast’s ComcastCares activities on Twitter, including feature articles in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. Suddenly, any company engaging customers with an official voice on Twitter is intriguing, and to be sure, there are other companies doing it, like Southwest Airlines.

The ExxonMobilCorp account, though, should have raised some red flags immediately. The graphic image on the account shows service stations, an odd choice since ExxonMobil has announced its intention to sell its service stations and get out of that business altogether. The person behind ExxonMobilCorp—who identified herself only as “Janet”—began answering questions that came from followers. Some were answers no self-respecting communicator would have given. For example, when someone raised the Exxon Valdez issue, Janet noted that, while tragic, the Valdez spill didn’t rank among the top 10 such incidents. Clearly, Janet has had no communication training, since that response would provoke anger and hostility.

Still, I was excited when I read Jeremiah Owyang’s account of the ExxonMobil Twitter stream, since I’d been out to ExxonMobil to talk about social media with the Public Affairs team. So, after reporting about it on FIR, I sent off a congratulatory note to my contact at ExxonMobil, only to learn in the reply that Janet and the account weren’t part of Public Affairs and the company was trying to track her down.(I want to be clear here: I didn’t alert anyone at ExxonMobil to the Twitter account; they already knew about it.) I tried to send a direct message to Janet, but since she had not opted to follow me on Twitter, it wasn’t possible.

Ultimately, I was able connect Jeremiah with Alan Jeffers, who works in Public Affairs and is an authoritative spokesperson for ExxonMobil. Jeremiah’s account of the conversation is here.

To their great credit, ExxonMobil never considered legal action aimed at Twitter (for trademark violation), opting to address the issue carefully and within the context of the social media culture. Jeffers also agreed, in his conversation with Jeremiah, that ExxonMobil needs to be diligent about those things that are being said “about you, by you, and (by) those pretending to be you.”

Jeremiah calls what happened to ExxonMobil “brandjacking.” He tells Janet that she should turn the Twitter ID keys over to ExxonMobil and own up to being something other than an official spokesperson for the company. (She may be an employee making a sincere effort to communicate in this space, but we won’t know until she fesses up, which I’ve asked her to do now in a public tweet.)

In the meantime, any company should be acquiring the Twitter account names that are most likely to be construed as official accounts; the same is true, now, of Identi.ca account names and the names of Friendfeed rooms. Far too many organizations shrug off emerging social media channels like Twitter and Friendfeed. The Janet incident should make it painfully clear just how easy it is for somebody to step in and represent your organization with inaccurate and even damaging information using these very channels.

Comments
  • 1.Two strange things happened last week. The first is this fake Guinness advert that's caused quite an uproar. The second is Janet, an ExxonMobile employee speaking for the company on Twitter, was exposed as a fake. How do you handle this?

  • 2.Surfing some daily links I came across an interesting story on how ExxonMobile’s brand name was hijacked by a hoax tweeter. The story is a great example of the problems of identity on the internet - how to verify, believe who people say they are...

  • 3.I've had senior managers ask me in the past why I was registering brand names on platforms we were unlikely to use at the time. And this was the type of situation I raised as a concern.

    Some still thought it was a waste of time - after all, how many people would actually use a social network or microblog platform?...*sigh*.

    Luckily they've got me, and an increasing number of people who do understand some of the risks!

    Dan Thornton | August 2008 | Cambridgeshire, UK

  • 4.Shel - Thanks for the post. Seems there's an opportunity for a company to offer a service to help businesses acquire their corporate names for social media "tools." With new social sites launching every 30 seconds it could be very a lucrative business! All joking aside, brandhacking, as Jeremiah terms this, has been a challenge since the first corporate website went live. ExxonMobile situation reinforces the need for monitoring conversations on social platforms. Will be interested to see how Twitter handles this and if their actions will it set precedent.

    Toby | August 2008 | Atlanta

  • 5.Your concluding paragraph brings up the following intellectual property question: As ICANN recently voted to relax its rules and allow any company with the right moolah to buy a top-level domain, e.g. .exxonmobil, how do you suggest companies buy such domains if they don't have the capital for the buy?

    Ari Herzog | August 2008

  • 6.That's an excellent question, Ari. How much will these top-level domains cost? I can see all kinds of issues arising around domains being out of reach for smaller companies, leaving them prey to domain squatters...er...speculators. Or ICANN may need to implement rules that prevent anyone BUT the company to acquire the domain.

    Shel Holtz | August 2008 | Washington, D.C.

  • 7.This is all conjecture of course, but what if Janet is an independent station owner or representative? What rights would she have in that case, if any?

    Thanks for checking this out with your personal contacts Shel. It has implications for many of my clients.

    Kami Huyse | August 2008

  • 8.Shel, thanks for the great article. Some fantastic comments as well. This will now be required reading for many of the people on my team.

    johnrhopkins | August 2008 | richmond, va

  • 9.Based on a recent post of mine about ICANN, the cost of a company-specific TLD could be $50,000 and up.

    See http://twurl.nl/7wmoxw

    Ari Herzog | August 2008

  • 10.Kami raises a good point, and one we're watching, too.

    Our company is a nationwide marketing franchise, and as you can imagine, our franchisees are marketing and PR pros who realize the value of social media. Maintaining brand ownership and brand consistency across so many platforms -- while not discouraging our stores from getting engaged -- is a delicate operation.

    Shel, any idea whether this is the first "fake" corporate Twitter account? First to go active instead of just squatting?

    Scott Hepburn | August 2008

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