Rick Bruner tipped us to this story about corporate hate sites. Forbes has published an article on the top corporate hate sites – those sites published by, in some cases, raving lunatics, who have a serious axe to grind with a particular company. While it’s easy to brush off these sites assuming few will see, with the advent of weblogs, combined with the already ubiquitous power of forums, chat and email, it would behoove any marketer who appears on this list to give serious consideration toward remedying the reasons behind the launch of the site.
Forbes ranked the sites on “ease of use, frequency of updates, number of posts, hostility level (angrier is better), relevance, and entertainment value.” Tops on the list are KB Homes for KBhomesucks, PayPal for Paypalsucks, Allstate Insurance for Allstateinsurancesucks, Microsoft for MS-Eradication, American Express for Amexsux, Wal-Mart for Walmart-Blows, Verizon for Verizonpathetic, United Airlines for Untied and UPS for UnitedPackageSmashers.
Of great importance to marketers, Forbes asked the creators of each of these site what each marketer would have to do to get the creator to take down the site. Predictably, the requirements are stiffer than most marketers would be willing to adhere to. As people are empowered with increasingly more wide reaching platforms on which to air their gripes, marketers should actively join these conversations rather than react to them with standard measures such as simply ignoring the complaints or engaging in tired, lame law suits. If a site like Subservient Chicken can become as popular as it did, there’s no reason a hate site like McDonaldsMakesYouMassive couldn’t become equally popular.
