Marques 2013: using social media to reach the crowd
During the final session of the Marques annual conference in Monte Carlo lawyers discussed the pros and cons of crowdsourcing and social media for brands.
To fit in with the session's theme, attendees were encouraged to tweet, text and use the Marques website to particpate in the discussion.
Using social media is an easy way for brands to interact with the public, said Marlou van de Braak, partner at Hoyng Monegier LLP, and research shows that consumers are very willing to share their thoughts on a brand.
Roland Mallinson, partner at Taylor Wessing LLP, ran through some of the ways in which brands can use crowdsourcing on social media to their benefit.
"Capturing what the online community knows," was the first, with examples including projects to map the human genome and the galaxy.
A second use - capturing what the community does - is sometimes called crowd labour, Mallinson said, but there are ethical issues associated with low wages and some people have called them "digital sweatshops".
"Capturing what people think" - the most obvious one is the Facebook like button - and "capturing what the community funds" (such as Kickstarter) were two more, while a third might be "capturing what the community creates".
In one case related to this last point, Unilever asked people to design an advert. The final product was 40 percent cheaper than usual, encouraging the company end a 12-year relationship with its ad agency.
Mallinson said he was unaware of any legal difficulties arising from crowdsourcing projects, so "we want to hear from anyone who has".
Looking next at the threats on social media, van de Braak said brands can "wake up in the middle of a storm", with consumers able to cause a lot of damage and steer a brand in the wrong direction.
One example she gave was of Disney's attempt to register the name of the US military squad ('Seal Team 6') that assasinated Osama Bin Laden in 2011. Once the the media discovered the application, van de Braak said, they were very negative (it was seen as greedy) and it "went viral on the Internet".
Disney later withdrew the application, but there were already many Facebook pages demanding a boycott of Disney products, she said.
Brand bashing (criticism, some of which might be inaccurate) and brand jacking - the illegal use of trademarked names online - were two more threats listed.
A prominent example of the second threat was Greenpeace's move to set up a hoax Shell website aimed at raising awareness of the oil company's plans (controversial) to drill in the Arctic. Greenpeace used a fake Twitter account telling people not to share the website content (so they did) and threatening legal action if people defamed Shell.
Though Shell did not take legal action against Greenpeace and the Twitter account was suspended, this was "very damaging", van de Braak said.
She added: "Sometimes you should tolerate problems on social media, but be proactive and obtain obvious account names for key brands."
Mallinson said social media networks will generally take down content in cases of brand jacking but not necessarily if there are parody or free speech issues.
In a concluding poll about who to sue - the site, the user or neither - if content is not removed, a majority of voters opted for the site.
The conference finishes today.
