中国媒体博克

BusinessWeek's Tiff Robers has written an article titled "Inside the war against China's blogs" that looks at the impact of China's blogosphere on companies doing business in China, and how a group of specialist PR and monitoring companies help clients manage reputation on the Chinese Internet. Among the companies featured is my friend Sam Flemming's CIC, which specializes in monitoring Internet word of mouth in China.
The story is interesting, but it rather makes the whole area of managing online reputation in China sound a bit swampy:

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. The
job description of one online help-wanted ad reads: "Publicize and
popularize [products] via online forums and blogs. Send at least 50
propaganda posts per day." Workers are offered 1.5 cents per post.

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, says
CEO Zhong Zhaochuan. "We write out topics and give them to members to
put on forums," says Zhong. That's what CWU did for a big Subaru dealer
last year. The Japanese automaker had raised the ire of Netizens
because its Chinese name sounds like "death to the Eighth Route army,"
which was perceived as insulting to a Chinese unit that battled Japan
in World War II. CWU urged forum leaders to delete negative comments,
then asked its writers to post positive news about Subaru, Zhong says.

Imagethief has been doing PR in China long enough to know that the ethics of Chinese media, including online media, and therefore of the PR industry that surrounds it, are still pretty gray. But that's not the whole picture, and it's pretty clear that Sam feels that this story isn't entirely fair to the industry. He's written a substantial post on the CIC blog responding to some of the points made in the story. Among other things, he takes issue with the "war" metaphor:

While we
certainly understand there are cases where companies are attacked
online, and this behavior is often the focus on media articles, we do
not believe "war" is an appropriate or accurate metaphor to view IWOM.
As we have outlined here and here,
we prefer the concept of the "connected agency," which Forrester
defines as an agency that has "a deep understanding of consumer
communities, helping brands create and nurture connections, deliver
targeted, on-demand messages, and network for talent and insights."

By tracking and analyzing IWOM, brands can tune into and connect
with the most informed, active and influential consumers in the market.
Brands can learn consumers' language, learn that they watch the NBA online and virtually cheer in BBS conversations, learn how they meet up offline, and learn how they research products online. In the end, we see that for brands, tracking and analyzing IWOM is not a threat, but an opportunity.

Read the story and Sam's response and see what you think.