If You Want Hell to Pay, Sue a Teenager
David Burk | January 2nd, 2010 | Uncategorized | 30 Comments »
Corporate marketers seem to forget their mythology on a regular basis, and it is in these moments that they find themselves in social media hell. Consider the situation emerging about The North Face suing a small parody site called The South Butt.
You think I’m kidding, right? No, here’s a link to the legal papers. The teenager who started the site, which is damned funny, is named James Winkelmann. In response to the suit, his lawyer said, “Little Jimmy doesn’t have enough money in his left pocket to pay for a six-pack of Coca-Cola much less” the demands by The North Face’s “silk-stocking law firms,” he said.
Call me crazy, but wasn’t this the same story that has thrown the record industry into a tailspin? Imagine the boardroom scene at the RIAA as peer-to-peer sharing was just beginning. “I’ve got it! Let’s sue our customers!” Since then, some studies have shown that they would have sold more music had they allowed peer-to-peer sharing to blossom. But, one of the more effective arguments made in this case was when David Boies talked to Wired: “You’ve gone from taking on Microsoft to taking on the RIAA. Which do you see as the more evil empire? Microsoft certainly has created more value. Microsoft built monopoly power, but it did so by creating and developing. There isn’t any product innovation in having multiple companies get together and decide jointly what they’re going to do. The monopoly power of the RIAA comes purely from collusion.”
What it all ignores is the myths on which our belief systems are based. If you’re Goliath, the meme spreads because you’ve attacked little David. This story isn’t about social media at all; it’s about common sense in communications and behavior. The problem is that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Instead of trying to figure out what their customers wanted, these companies have decided that they know, that they are omnipotent. The real problem, as we all now know, is that social media is a fabulous amplification system for wrong-headed thinking.
I’m off to The South Butt now!
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