Thanks for the memories and advice King of the Hill

Last night I watched a recent aired episode of the animated series King of the Hill (Fox, Sunday November the 2nd, 2008) titled "Lost in MySpace". Below is the Wikipedia summary of the episode:

"To boost business, Strickland Propane creates a MySpace page despite Hank's bad feelings about the idea. Mr. Strickland gives Donna full responsibility over the page, but she fills it with personal information about the employees, leading to conflicts throughout the office. Meanwhile, Dale rents a pig to hunt truffles, loses it, and has to borrow Ladybird in order to track it down." (Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_King_of_the_Hill_episodes)

After watching the episode, I noticed that this episode involved a fair deal of hints and pitfalls of Internet marketing, especially when it crosses the line between professional and personal life.

Specifically (although it is not mentioned by the Wiki summary), while the MySpace page did promote personal interoffice conflicts, it also included an element of customer attraction, retention, even so much such that the 'friends' of Donna arrived in a flash mob to confront Hank when he posted that Donna was an 'idiot' (while in fact that beat the owner, Mr. Strickland, instead). After this, Donna is fired. However, since she still has account access to the company website, she proceeds to begin a smear campaign against the company, calling for it's closure and 'death'.

What a frightening and potentially dangerous concept! Not only to a buisness but even an individual!

Therefore, it seems that Internet marketers and those who have an active online life should be even more careful with their choices and statements in the e-world. Disgruntled employees and customers have been given a very public space in which they can voice their opinions, rightly or wrongly, about a person or company. Given this risk, it would be prudent for companies to evaluate and investigate the online actions of their employees, both current and former, to ensure that no negative campaigning is occurring. While negative campaigns can be countered by positive campaigns aimed at dispelling the misinformation, if slanderous events are occurring, especially when of a threatening nature, the perpetrators must be held accountable to the full extent of the law. Those companies and individuals who do not take these actions only welcome more negative behaviour from these people and risk further damage to their reputation and perhaps more.

Thanks for the advice King of the Hill.

P.S. Unfortunately King of the Hill has been cancelled by Fox networks after a very long and successful run. It is being replaced by a cartoon by (who else?) Seth MacFarlane (creator of Family Guy, American Dad, and now "The Cleveland Show". While I enjoy Seth's work, isn't it enough to have 2 out of the 3 prime Sunday night spots? Oh well, it was a good run.

AA