Virtual barbarians at the gate: Web “anti-sites.”

I wrote this cover story for the Fall 1998 issue of the Public Relations Society of America’s STRATEGIST magazine, adapting it from a paper I’d written a year earlier while in graduate school.

by David Grady

Pretend, for a moment, that you’re in charge of public relations for a major pharmaceutical company.

Outside your corporate headquarters, a group of protesters chants angry slogans about the high price of your promising new cancer drug. Day after day the protesters gather, and more than a few passersby stop to listen to the demonstrators – some of whom are shouting profanities about your company’s alleged greed. Bystanders shake their heads in agreement before wandering off, carrying with them their new-found opinions about your company.

In the “real world,” you have many options: ignore the demonstrators; have security eject them from your property; explain your pricing policy at a press conference; start a long-term educational campaign about your drug or device.

But what about the online world?

What do you do when you find yourself the focus of an Internet smear campaign?

Anti-sites on the rise

Because so-called “new media” lowers the point of entry into mass publishing, virtually anyone – a disgruntled former employee, a customer who had a bad experience with a particular company or a general ill-wisher – can publish anti-company sentiments on a global platform, via the World Wide Web.

Just visit such sites as http://www.aolsucks.com, and http://www.bellatlanticsucks.com to see for yourself. Or run a keyword search on “Microsoft” at a search engine like Yahoo and discover the League of Microsoft Haters (L.O.M.H.), the South Africa-based National Society of Microsoft Haters, AntiMicrosoft UK and the International Anti-Microsoft Ring.

Call them “anti-sites.”

Anti-sites should be of great concern to public relations practitioners. Imagine how the PR department at Wal-Mart feels about http://www.walmartsucks.com, a site that publishes purported horror stories from alleged customers and former employees, or http://members.aol.com/walmopboy/abuse/, another anti-Wal-Mart site.

In a town where Wal-Mart wants to build a new store, how many Planning Board members went online to learn about the company, only to find links to its anti-sites? And how many of these decision-makers formed negative opinions about the company before even the first zoning hearing, just because they visited http://www.walmartsucks.com?

While you can’t sic your security guards on these virtual protesters, you can fight back. Doing so effectively starts with recognizing the parallels between real world strategies and online options.

In 1997, Paul Greene, a student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts, discovered a flaw in Microsoft’s latest Web browser – a flaw that posed a serious threat to Microsoft’s bid to dominate the browser market.

Greene’s Web page — http://www.cybersnot.com — explained the flaw in detail.

As so often happens today, reporters from traditional news outlets went online to comb the headlines and discovered online news coverage of the cybersnot.com story. The following day, the story lead the news. Microsoft was facing a serious crisis.

Relying on classic crisis communications strategies, Microsoft immediately fessed up to its mistake and issued a press release (to both online and traditional media outlets) that praised Greene’s findings. The software giant also promised to post a downloadable solution for the browser bug on http://www.microsoft.com the following day.

Microsoft followed through with its promise and contained the crisis. Print reports of the product flaw mentioned — high up in the stories — that Microsoft was already fixing the problem. Many online news organizations linked directly to the bug fix at the Microsoft site. The suddenly-popular cybersnot.com website also linked to positive online news coverage of Microsoft’s response.

The company looked prepared and competent.

Strategies for fighting anti-sites

Other companies, however, are taking a different approach to anti-sites. Many have actually purchased the rights to certain Web addresses (URLs) that might otherwise become anti-sites. Atlanta-based Cox Communications, for example, owns http://www.coxsucks.com, and Chase Manhattan Bank owns http://www.ihatechase.com.

This kind of first-strike approach, however, is limited in effectiveness.

Bekins, the national moving company, for example, is plagued by a Web site that emulates the official http://www.bekins.com look and feel. This anti-site, however, defiles the corporate logo and asks in a headline “Bekins – the Worst Moving Company?” The subhead is even worse: “Bekins unofficial motto – ‘We Don’t Give a Shit.’”

But the Web address for this anti-Bekins site is http://www.thielen.com/bekins. This URL, like the anti-Microsoft’s “cybersnot.com” URL, couldn’t have been anticipated and purchased in advance.

To meet this challenge, cybersavvy public relations practitioners are also adding something called metatags to their websites, which can often push the anti-sites out of view on search engines. A website is a collection of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) code. Search engines like Yahoo and Excite catalog Web pages by relevance, which is determined partly by the words embedded in the HTML as they relate the keyword used in the search.

A user asks a search engine to find “wal-mart,” and the engine returns with a list of links to Web pages that contain that keyword in the HTML.

Metatags are pieces of HTML code that can lure a search engine into placing the site on a higher relevancy scale.

Bekins’ failure to employ metatags within http://www.bekins.com – and the anti-site’s extensive use of metatags – means that a consumer searching for Bekins gets a link to http://www.bekins.com, followed closely by a link to the harmful anti-Bekins site. The inclusion of all those “Bekins”‘s in the anti-site’s HTML metatags catches the search engine’s eye.

In addition to this high-tech method, another approach to combating anti-sites is applying good old-fashioned media relations strategies to the online world.

The most popular Web sites are search engines like Yahoo and Excite, and most Web surfers rely on these engines to find the sites they want. Increasingly, these search engines use real live human editors to collect Web links, which are published in channel sections on the search engine.

Ask Yahoo to search on the keywords “cold medicines,” for example, and it will first suggest you visit the Yahoo health channel, which contains links to websites about viruses, medicine and general health information. If you are a public relations professional representing a pharmaceutical company that has a website devoted to common cold remedies, you need to approach the search engine editors (usually called “producers”) and advocate for inclusion within the Web guide — just as you might pitch your press release to a print publication or VNR to a television station.

Developing a solid media list for publications printed online is just as important as developing such a list for print and broadcast outlets. Having your website included in a search engine channel means more people are likely to see your site – and that fewer will stumble across the anti-site that’s vexing you.

To sue, or not to sue?

But can and should you sue an anti-site creator for mocking your website, your company and its reputation?

In addition to containing inflammatory claims, the anti-Bekins site and http://www.aolsucks.com contain bastardized versions of the two company’s logos, leading some to believe that the way to best fight anti-sites is through the laws pertaining to defamation, trademarks and copyright.

At what point do anti-sites go too far and legally defame the company they have targeted? We must now consider the muddy issue of what constitutes defamation. A statement of opinion as if it were fact that harms a reputation by exposing the person to hatred or ridicule is considered defamatory. Proving the destructive nature of the anti-site is therefore a path, but a path full of pitfalls.

Each corporation that finds it has an anti-site working against it must weigh the benefits of taking legal action against the deficits of doing so. A company that goes after the “little guy” who is publishing an anti-site risks being perceived as the “bad guy” – especially among the very-vocal community of online citizens. Letters from AOL threatening legal action against the webmaster of http://www.aolsucks.com are reprinted on that anti-site – with commentary that further lampoons AOL.

At last check, 206 other websites were linking to this anti-AOL site.

When fighting back against anti-sites, many other issues pertaining to the law must be also considered. What about the use of a bastardized version of your corporate logo in the anti-site? Does such a misuse constitute copyright infringement or a trademark violation – or is it simply “fair use” in the name of parody?

In a number of cases before the courts, the jury, literally, is still out.

Instead of waiting for Internet law to be written, we suggest that public relations practitioners do online what they do best in the real world: build relationships with those in positions of editorial influence; recruit satisfied customers to speak well of your company at every opportunity; monitor what publications are saying about you; respond thoughtfully.

Bill McLaughlin, Executive Vice President, Lois Paul & Partners, a Burlington, Massachusetts-based agency that provides strategic counsel and public/investor relations services for high-technology companies nationwide, says lawsuits and angry letters from lawyers should be “the court of last resort” when it comes to fighting anti-sites.

“The smartest thing to do,” McLaughlin says, “is to initiate a dialogue with the individual to identify what the issues are.” Creating a dialogue with an anti-site webmaster can help a company fix the core issues – bad customer service or a faulty product — that fuel the anti-site. Microsoft’s handling of the cybersnot.com anti-site proves this can be an effective strategy.

Ideally, such a dialogue should take place in the “real world,” via a phone call or a face to face meeting. Jumping into the fray on a website or in a chat room increases your chances of losing control of the dialogue – and having your words reprinted out of context on an anti-site.

Embrace the medium

As the web continues its phenomenal growth, anti-sites will no doubt become more common, and PR professionals will have to bring to the online world the same vigilance they bring to their efforts to monitor press coverage and public opinion in the real world. With its metatags and search engines and online publications, new media may feel new, but the old rules still apply.

Paul Greene, whose cybersnot.com made headlines across the globe, says “the whole world takes you seriously” when you publish on the web. But his appraisal of how Microsoft’s handled his anti-site affirms our belief that the best way of fighting back is to address the anti-site’s accusations head on, without lawsuits and threatening letters.”If Microsoft even attempted to be mean to us,” says Greene, “the media would have had an even bigger field day than they did.”