06.17.08
The China Blog Wars
I just finished reading a fantastic piece in BusinessWeek - Inside the War Against China’s Blogs.
The article describes how a new market has emerged for companies who help monitor China’s blogosphere and help fight negative and potentially brand damaging remarks before they turn into a PR crisis. These services cost anywhere between USD 500 and USD 25,000 a month, as the article quotes, and major clients of such firms include Toyota, Nike, Carrefour, McDonald’s, and many others.
What caught my eye was this :
Plenty of companies are willing to pay for positive spin. PR outfits hire students to write postings that boost certain brands and criticize the competition, says a staffer at a Western PR firm in Beijing.
Chinese Web Union is candid about doing this. It pays thousands of people to write nice things about clients, and it compensates forum leaders who spread positive information and quash bad publicity.
So basically, some companies are paying for a positive spin… and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are companies paying for a negative spin…
Heck, for USD 25,000 a month, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some “PR companies” that are doing both at the very same time…
Share This“War is good for business” — The 34th rule of acquisition.