Hell Hath No Fury…

03Oct07

Picture by adarshr Some rights reserved.

The Irish blogosphere¹ has been abuzz for the last couple of days with the latest example of how potentially powerful bloggers have become in Ireland, how careful – and informed – companies have to be to avoid running into serious PR trouble and how they should really learn to react in a positive way when they get into trouble.

It all pretty much kicked off with this post by Michele Neylon about the response he got from Monster when he complained about being spammed by them. Things got worse when some character called “Pedro” started slinging muck about on the comments to the post only to be found out as coming in from a Monster.com IP address. Not as bizarrely funny as the whole Sky Handling Partners incident but on the same track.

Things get more fun as Tom Raftery blogs about it and then gets threatened with legal action unless he finds a patsy. Damien Mulley joins in and then submits the story to Digg. Now the whole thing is going to be hitting the press tomorrow apparently².

Unfortunately this appears to be a case of someone with a poor understanding of technology, or at least how to use it. In my experience sales and marketing staff and recruiters³ are usually the least technically savvy people I’ve ever come across in the tech industry. It seems that when you put these two together and have a marketing person in a recruitment firm you end up with a recipe for disaster.

The sad fact is that this person is bearing the brunt of it personally. Hell hath no fury like a bunch of angry bloggers and if at least some of those bloggers happen to be professional journalists you are heading for some seriously bad PR. Having said that it looks like this individual brought all upon himself by first assuming that he could use IT@Cork’s membership list⁴ to mass-mail people and then trying to cover up with bluster and threats.

First rule when you’re in a hole is to stop digging. Attempting to “recall” the email won’t work – you’re just trying to pull a Homer⁵ – and threatening legal action is a bit like poking a wasps nest with a stick⁶.

In future, try a mea culpa and apologise. You’ll find it’ll defuse the situation very quickly.

– Fintan

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1 – Blog O’Sphere? Bah, never really liked that word anyway.
2 – Especially if the Metro and Herald AM continue their cheap editorial policy of recycling stories found on the Internet. Seriously, they’re in danger turning into a link blog.
3 – Bar one or two exceptions.
4 – Although it was a bit foolish leaving it public where any spammer could get a hold of it.
5 – Homer: Hello, my name is Mr Burns. I believe you have a letter for me.
Postie: Okay Mr. Burns what’s your first name?
Homer: I don’t know.
6 – A Bad Idea.

Filed under: Blogging, Business, Marketing   |  2 Comments