Piaras Kelly PR – Public Relations in Ireland

And reputation bleeds in ev’ry word – Charles Churchill

One question that’s been flying around the Net of late is whether one man can make a difference. Everyone has been harping on about Jeff Jarvis’ dissatisfaction with Dell of late, but last week I found proof firsthand that negative Consumer Generated Media does affect your brand.

It started early last week when I received an email from DVDSoon, my online DVD retailer of choice, that my orders had been cancelled because they were installing a new payment system. That sounded rather suspect, but since I have been using them for a while I thought of it as an inconvenience rather than a nuisance. The next day the site was back up and I tried ordering my goods again, however none of my credit was being used and I had to pay full price again.

Rather annoyed I went to the Films section of Boards.ie and started down the path of negative Consumer Generated Media which has pretty much destroyed any credibility the company had with its regular users, an opinion which is sure to spread across the web.

Despite their efforts to put a spin on the situation, by not engaging in the conversation they completely lost the trust of their customers. Just look at a simple Google search for proof of the negative impact on their brand.

Technorati Tags: Consumer Generated Media, DVDSoon, New Media, Online Shopping, Social Media, Word-of-mouth