(&be $unllun Q;r1tJ.\Tnph SEPTEMBER 9 2007

www.telegraph.co.uklbusiness

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Business

• •lonarlesToday's activists are givingbusiness a bloody nosefrom behind theirkeyboards - not thebarricades. But savvy. . .. .compames are Jommg ill,reports Juliette Garside

Revolutions used tohappen in the streets- these days they takeplace online. Andthe targets are more

often big businesses than badgovernments. Banks, in particular,are feeling the brunt of grassrootsinternet campaigns.

HSBC has just been forcedinto a U-turn over graduateoverdrafts after the NationalUnion of Students campaign usedFacebook to generate a massiveprotest. The HSBC incidentfollowed hot on the heels of awidespread revolt against thehigh charges levied for bouncedcheques and unauthorised9verdrafts. The advice siteMoneySavingExpert.com becamea focus for the protest, with morethan 4m copies of a templateletter threatening banks withlegal action downloaded from thesite.

Martin Lewis, who set upthe site four years ago with¥lOO and now has 3m visitors amonth, is not one to underplaythe power of the internet - norhis own influence. "The bankcharges campaign is the biggesteonsumer revolt since the polltax riots. The big difference isthat this campaign was donefrom armchairs and not from the~treet. To make campaigningwork you have to make it easyfor people, and the web doesthat beautifully."

Cruciallv. customers

HowmSETUPYOUR OWNCAMPAIGN SITEDOIde .. UfyJOUl' issue anddecide on an achIeRbieoutcome. Research thelaw, the mIIJ't(et and atherconsumer experteneeLProve that what you are askingfor is possible. and that there isa demand for what you want toachieve. Use case studies.Build en online presencefor your campaign. Initiate .dlscuuloM on communItr ,I..... such .. My.1e .......co.uk or specIaIlntereetcIud: forums. let up a groupon social netwol'ldng .....like MJSpace or Facebook. ,_Invite your friends and ,t

colleagues to join your • It

group.1f It's a serious laue, .start. petition on theNumber 10website.Make sure you are usingconsistent key words that can bepicked up by search engines. sothat when people are searchingfor infoimation on your topic theycan find your comments.Make It easy for other8to take action. ProvIdesample letters that can bedownloaded and sent tocompanies, MPs and IOC8Icouncil ..

Contact people or lobbygroups with a pUblic profile

who support yourcampaign. Do your

own PR - identifyreporters andColumnists

who might beinterested in \publicisingyour cause.

DON'TSet unrealistic goals. Worldpeace Is • worthy butdoomed cause.Rant when you are trying to getsomeone onside.Bombard your targets orpotential allies withlengthy, IIIInfonned orImtIevant information.Try to campaign on your own.Leave It too late-It Isharder to, campaign whenan official decision hasbeen taken.Just talk about it - take action inthe real world as well as online.

i··········-For a more detailed.,® gud, to campaigning,packed with useful

information and links, visitWAaraph.co.BIbusIness

Refusing to engage can bedangerous. Anyone typing Land I

Rover into Google will find thatafter the corporate website, thenext link in the list is for a blogentitled "The Truth about theLand Rover Discovery 3". Setup in 2005 by a customer whohad been given two duff modelsby the company and eventuallyclaimed his money back, itdetails a long list of complaintsabout poor product quality andlack of customer service.

The author, Adrian Melrose,offered to hand his site over toLand Rover so that it could useit to create a customer forum.The company declined. AsMelrose put it: "Land Rover isn't I

committed to opening a dialoguewith their customers. What apity, because their customers aredoing it without them." :

John Straw of online business I

consultancy Disrupted Horizonbelieves the internet will force asea change in the way companiesmarket themselves and develop I

new products. "If you build aproduct that is under par you aregoing to get found out. Peoplewill be able to verify marketing ,messages. In this environmentcustomer service becomesa marketing tool, and if youare really bad at it that will goviral."

The revolution may have movedfrom the street to the armchair,but it has been slow to reach theboardrooms. _'

'One of theadvantages of being

in a conversationbefore a crisis hits

is that you can buildfriendships'

picked up by searchengines. Press releasesshould be distributedto the widest possiblearray of online neWssources, and written ina search-friendly way,with keywords usedprominently.

Howell at ImmediateFuture suggests forminggood relationships with

online communities - byhelping them organise eventsor competitions, or review newproducts. "One of the advantagesof being in the conversationbefore the crisis hits is you canbuild friendships, people whowill rush to your defence whensomething goes wrong."

She rarely intervenes directlyin conversations, recommendingexecutives from the companyspeak out rather than leaving itto the PRs. Underhand tacticssuch as pretending to be anordinary member of the publiccan backfire spectacularly.Saintsforever.com became apopular forum for SouthamptonFC fans who wanted to oust theclub's chairman Rupert Lowe.Last year they claimed that staffat a PR agency employed by Loweto fight his corner had postedsupportive comments on the site,while posing as fans. He is nolonger chairman.

Those who engage openly andrespond to complaints fare better.In 2005, US journalist Jeff Jarviswrote about his struggles with PCmaker Dell's customer supporton his blog, BuzzMachine.com.Jarvis was soon joined in his DellHell rants by many other unhappycustomers, and the company'sshare price took a hit.

It belatedly responded bysetting up Dellcommunity.com,a forum for its customers to air .their gripes and put forwardsuggestions. Thousands flockedto the forum and the company hassince used the feedback to tailorits products. When Microsoftlaunched Vista, the latest versionof Windows, earlier this year,Dell's customers asked for theright to have the older versionpre-loaded on to new machines,and the company won browniepoints by complying.

•likely to beread immediately.

Butcher has a friend who isplanning her wedding usingTwitter and a network of 500members, but he says thetechnology could have its uses forcampaigners too, such as anti-war protester Brian Haw, whohas been camping in ParliamentSquare for a number of years,despite police attempts to movehim on. "Haw could cook up aninstant crowd via Twitter if hewere about to be arrested."

Despite daily evidence thatcorporate reputations cansustain rapid and lasting damageonline, many brands have beenslow to defend themselves onthe web. Paul Mead, managingdirector of VCCP Search,specialises in online crisismanagement and is currentlyworking on the bank chargesissue for one of the organisationsconcerned. VCCP is ownedby Chime Communications,whose chairman, Lord Bell,the grandfather of modern-day British PR, clearly realisesthe importance of protectinghis clients online as well as intraditional media.

Mead warns: "Whetheror not you decide to getinvolved, knowing about thoseconversations is absolutely vital.You can detect storms that arebrewing, spheres of influence thatare growing."

He says too many chiefexecutives are afraid of the onlinespace and as a result choose todo nothing about it. He cites theCadbury salmonella scare, theBritish Airways cabin crew strikeand last week's National Expresscoach crash as examples wherethe companies concerned didtoo little to get their messagesacross online. Those searchingfor information on these eventswould have been hard pushedto find anything but links tonegative coverage.

Mead suggests severalstrategies to counter this problem.Advertising messages can beplaced on Google or Yahoo!. Inorder to appear in the unpaidsearch results - the ones readerspay most attention to - companiescan make sure messages aboutthe crisis are placed on theirown website so as to be easily

Another byteat the cherry:online fans ofthecadburyWlspahavepersuaded theconfectionerygiant to makethe chocolatebar again

critical massand its target shouldbegin to worry.

Mike Butcher, editor of internetstart-up blog TechCrunch, saysthe linking process that allowscampaigns to gather force hasbeen accelerated and broughtinto the mainstream by socialnetworking sites. "It started offin the blogosphere but it tookdedicated hardcore techie peopleto create that effect. In socialnetworking you create a profileand immediately start talking to awider audience."

Sites like MySpace and Face-book automate linking by askingnew members to hand overtheir email address books sothat messages can be sent out tofriends asking them to join. Thosewho do can choose to receivealerts about new content postedby their network of friends.

A new generation of "microblogging" social networks looksset to accelerate the processfurther. Twitter.com lets memberssend alerts to mobile phonesand instant messenger windows,meaning the information is more

Mum posted by those nostalgic for another era.Paul Mead ofVCCP says: "When things are

faked you see a steep drop-off after one of twosites - indicating no community or organicgrowth around the topic.". Bilsborough says 23m bars will go on salein October, but no more will be produced afterthat unless internet demand translates intosales. "This is as much a test of the internet asof our chocolate. If the internet really does turnout to be a valid (7()SS section of public opinionwe'll bring it back permanently."

'A site likemoneysavingexpert

compares to thelargest unions in

terms of influence'

. clientsare originatingand whether they arereaching critical mass. Theinfluence of a commentator ismeasured not simply by theamount of traffic to their site, butby the number of other relatedsites which reference theircomments and contain links to it.

The process mimics academicpublishing. Authors of newpapers will underpin theirstatements by references topreviously published papers. Theline of influence is acknowledgedand traceable.

Google uses similar techniquesto decide which sites to put at thetop of its search lists. The morelinks to its site a blogger has, thehigher it appears on Google. Oncea campaign begins to ap~ear atthe top of Google, it has reached

Hundreds are typing "Wispa" into searehengines each month and there are over 90Bring Back WlSpa groups on Facebook alone,with nearly 14,000 members between them.

The map also shows the size and breadthof the community involved. Half a dozensites from Gopetition.co.uk to Chocablog.com were very influential, generating largenumbers of links and comments, with dozensmore involved. YouTube was the hub, with acollection ofWispa ads featuring comics fromHi-tIe-Hi!, Yes Minister and It Ain't HaJ{Hot

websitebelongs to AlfredDonovan, now in his 90s, andhis son John. The Donovansowned a chain of petrol stationsin east London and Essexand created sales promotionscampaigns for Shell. But they fellout with the company and airedtheir grievances online.

Their site became a hubfor activists and disgruntledformer employees. It has beenused to mobilise support forenvironmental campaigns by thelikes ofWWF, the environmentallobbying group, against drillingin the Arctic and Russia, forgroups worried about Shell'ssocial impact in Ireland andNigeria, and by the company'sformer group auditor BillCampbell to raise issues aboutemployee safety.

So-called "gripe sites" areas old as the web itself, but noteveryone with an axe to grindcan create a buzz. Katy Howellis managing director of onlinePR agency Immediate Future,and has worked for Sony andSamsung: "There are a lot ofpeople complaining. But whensomebody hits a chord a blogswarm occurs. 'People startlinking to that site."

Howell employs web mappingsoftware which allows her totrack where comments about her

Cadbury responds to Wispas on the webShould online campaigns influence

product strategy? Cadbury is testing theweb as a market research tool by bringing

its Wispa bar back for a limited edition trialnext month following a groundswell ofdemand from bloggers. _

When news filtered out, cynics wonderedwhether some of those clamouring for thereturn of the 19808 confectionery classic onYouTube and Doyouremember.co.uk had notin fact been members of Cadbury's marketing

~n~ =~2h.a company spokesman,daims not Even the stonning of Iggy Pop'sGlastonbury performance by a member of theaudience with a Wispa banner was apparentlygenuine. It reportedly featured the words~ yom pig's bum" - not a commonly usedmarketing phrase.

"Once we knew it was coming back. wepromoted it," said Bilsborough. "But we didn'tset things up on the internet to bring it back.The incident at Glastonbury wasn't us."

To verify Cadbury's claims, we asked VCCPSearch. the online monitoring agency, tocreate a web map of the petitions, blogs anddiscussions on the subject. VCCP found thatthe first mentions dated back to a posting onFunkypancake, a photography website, inQctober 2003, lamenting Cadbury's decision toaxe the sweet a couple of months previously.

"nQ"'D"U;P.l.yt:looU-U"

ast year whenPlymouthlaw studentStephenHone sued.A.bbeyovertwo £32 fines.Abbey settled out of court,and as others brought similarcomplaints many banks followedsuit. The hope, presumably, wasto avoid setting a legal precedentwhich would have outlawedexcessive charges. Payoff themoaners, and rely on the fact thatmost of us are too apathetic totake legal action.

But the template letters havebeen used so widely that anestimated £2.6bn has beenclaimed back. The Governmenthas had to step in to freezecompensation claims, pendingthe outcome of a High Court testcase. Attempting to brush theissue under the carpet has costthe banks a vast sum, and therecould be more pain to follow.

"A site like mine compares tothe largest of trade unions now interms of influence," claims Lewis."The structure of collectivismhas changed." Indeed, the rightto protest is protected online as itis on the streets and in industry.Courts and trademark bodiesare increasingly supportiveof individuals and pressuregroups when someone registersa domain name similar to thatof their target so long as thesite is non-commercial, withno subscriptions and no paidadvertising.

Oil company Shell found thisout when it tried, unsuccessfully,to claim ownership of the nameRoyaldutchs~ellplc.com. The

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