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sony_rootkit.jpgDear Fortune 500 company PR people still asking “how can I possibly find time to read blogs?”and “Who really reads what these bloggers write anyway?”: take a look at Information Week’s report on what happened to Sony BMG Music Entertainment.
There is a new set of rules that change marketing dramatically.
Alan Scott, chief marketing office at business information service Factiva, said, “The old way of doing things by ignoring issues, or with giving the canned PR spin response within the blogosphere, it just doesn’t work.”
Sony’s decision to withdraw its controversial copy-protected CDs, it ignored weeks of flames by scores of bloggers. Bloggers say, apparently correctly, that Sony’s music CDs surreptitiously installed digital rights management software based on a “rootkit”–a hacking tool widely considered to be spyware. That’s not only bad, it might also be illegal.
“There’s a whole new set of rules that people have to live by,” Scott says. “Whether it’s blogs or user groups or NGOs, it’s all about honesty and authenticity. This is just the latest painful example of a major company finding that the old tools and the old actions don’t work.”