Legal firm launches social media reputation protection agency En Garde

The old adage “You have two ears and one mouth…” applies in social media as well. I would hazard a guess that social media offerings coming out of PR agencies would involve a period of listening prior to any engagement tactics being recommended anyway.

It will be interesting to see the flavour that a law firm adds to the mix and whether this joint venture will be functional given how opposed the two philosophies can be at times. Best of luck though, it’s always good to see new perspectives.

Makes sense to us. Many of the large businesses we are pitching to are getting increasingly worried by the growing examples of stuff ups and not having their own correct procedures in place to deal with social media issues.

Any company to not consider it from this angle is mad. Its a logical step. Good on them.

Don’t mess with the internet man

Great to see Stop.Edit. featured on mUmbrella for the second time this week…first Frasers Property, now en garde….

Anyone who jumps into a social media campaign without conducting monitoring first is asking for trouble. What En Garde is offering is not new – all good agencies (regardless of discipline) have been doing this for some time, years in fact. To suggest it is a world first is well, just rubbish.

Isn’t this just a function of having a thought-out PR strategy, executed through so-called, social media (digital, conversational channels)?

has this idea been researched with the target client group?

other than a new layer of cost, it doesnt seem to add anything to the existing market research, digital media monitoring and legal services already used by consumer-focussed companies

as for the emergency response- this is already handled by PR agencies, who will tell you that lawyers and media don’t mix and only damage your reputation even further

the fact that neither Turner Freeman nor s7 realise this speaks volumes about their suitability or lack thereof when it comes to online reputation management

internet usage policy, email policy, social media guidelines…logical.

I think this is their market.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tech.....ook-arrest

This initiative will likely come to nothing unless En Garde can attract the kind of uber-connected geeks who can stay ahead of the pack. Otherwise they’ll be flying blind just like everyone else, and it won’t be long before everyone sees they’re full of it.

The other aspect to this is that high risk and short time-to-market is more-or-less required online. The most successful companies release early and release often, and do little to manage what people are saying about them.

There was a time when you could manage reputation in this heavy-handed kind of way because of the lead time in getting messages out through traditional media. That time, I believe, has passed. Anyone who takes the time to do diligence will always end up being overtaken by a small, agile, risk-taking company that just doesn’t care about that kind of thing. And people will love them for it.

Well, that’s my 2c anyway 😉

Dan

@sven: spot on!
I can only see this process further slowing the process in the space. Being agile is key in the space.

This is a potentially dangerous route they are treading. Monitoring is fine, most agencies do that for their clients. However, stating as a goal to “prevent social media marketing campaigns from becoming a platform for inappropriate content or attacks on brands” makes their monitoring seem like a business development platform to source reasons for litigation. Not a great development, and if you are going to have a conversation with consumers, you have to be prepared for some of them to not like you and say so. Censoring opinion is not a great look for any brand, not to mention being a fairly futile endeavor.

social media in many circumstances isnt a conversation, its just consumers yelling. I think you’re missing the point of what this mob are trying to provide. Censorship? hardly.

http://www.thepunch.com.au/art.....ial-media/

Hi Changa

I am happy to put my name to my posts and disagree fervently with Ferrier, as anonymous posts are important to the workings the constructive arguments that form great content, even though many of them are purile. I’d be happy any time to debate this with Adam, and in fact around 3 years ago stated a case for anonymous comments in Campaign Brief as a response to Nobby.

Yes in many circumstances social media is simply yelling, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to engage in real conversations. Social media causes a lot of brands headaches, but we can’t pretend it isn’t there.

For the record, I believe social media is overhyped, but such is the nature of the Gartner hype cycle, and would recommend a client spend no more than 8% of their digital media budget on SMM. However, we shouldn’t dismiss it, and smart brands understand the need to engage with the voices in the crowd, no matter what the content.

I knew it wouldn’t take long for the lead weights of society to jump on the social media bandwagon.

Does this mean lawyers will be changing their pricing model?

Rather than charging $200 for sending a letter…they’ll be charging $200 for 140 characters or a retweet!!!

errr….shouldn’t they be monitoring this conversation and chipping in by now with a response to some good comments above?
Personally, I think it’s a good idea as long as it’s the right kind of law firm (culturally). Clients are likely to value a service that allows them to respond to an issue quicker with good advice from what has often been two opposing views. If they get it right, they’ll be able to engage communities with confidence and with best practice.
At the end of the day, they’ll be pitching it strongly as a more professional and ‘safer’ service. There’s enough fear out there in corporate Australia for that to be compelling I would have thought.

is this just lawyers looking to earn revenue on the time their staff are spending on social web channels

twitter x 24 mins = $160.12
facebook x 2 hours = $526.78
client phonecall x 13 mins = $91.45

Thanks for all the input guys. Matt Lawton, you put it best! appreciate that you saw the value add side of it.
Will take the rest of the comments on board!
Have a good weekend everyone.

James Griffin.
SR7

I’m not sure I agree that agencies are panicking clients into campaigns without due diligence. The point of social media is that the conversation is happening with or without you and it is a much better idea to oin in the conversation than not to. With that in mind it doesn’t make sense to ignore what is currently happening. On one level I don’t think that the offer put forward quite ‘gets it’, and on the other if what they say is true then there are clients who are going about this all wrong and agencies who are guiding clients whilst not having a clue themselves. I hope that isn’t the case.

Social media should be a part of the overall digital marketing strategy for a company. The agency should be supplying exactly the service that is described in the article and so I would be very unwilling to deal with an agency that didn’t do this. Similarly If the agency is doing this along with offering the rest of the services, then there is no need for lawyers to be involved.

Its reminding me a bit of the early days of the web when everyone dreamed up reasons why they were web designers. In the end it was the web designers who provided a service combining creative, technical, business, user experience and standards that survived, and everyone else produced a few bits of rubbish and then faded from view.

Sven…Target market…

http://www.smh.com.au/technolo.....-i3js.html

http://www.smh.com.au/technolo.....-i9a1.html