This must all be considered with the already low levels of trust towards brands
and rising volumes of conversation taking place about them online. Clay Shirkey
presents this well and argues that it is a numbers game – brands can simply
no longer compete with the sheer volume of stakeholder-driven conversation
taking place online. In the words of the McKinsey Quarterly “brands now only
control 66% of their brand touch points”. The world of reputation management
surely has changed from the paper based spin-doctory of the late 20th century.
A simple search for your +complaints (for example apple
+complaints) is likely to demonstrate exactly how deep and powerful this
movement is – with websites such as TripAdvisor boasting that 88% of visitors’
purchasing decisions are influenced based on reviews seen on their site.