Consumer brands in India under attack?

Venkat Ramna, Chief, Valuepitch Interactive
What do ICICI Bank, Dish TV, Sharekhan and Coke India have in common?

When you Google these corporate brands, you get at least one negative result.

For 'icicibank', the 8th result reads – "ICICI Bank - A bad experience for many"

For 'dish tv', the 10th result reads, "Zee Dish TV vs. Tata Sky DTH :: Insanity Rediscovered", which speaks of a consumer’s bad experience with Dish TV.

For 'share khan' the 5th result reads "A blog about nothing: Share Khan or Sheer Wimp?".

Search for 'coke india' and you will notice 5 of the 10 results being negative. The 5th result reads "IRC- Coca-Cola -- Campaign to Hold Coca-Cola Accountable".

These corporations are not the only ones that get negative visibility. An increasing number of brands have an increasing number of negative posts occupying the first page in Google search results. Millions of people use search engines to reach websites, since remembering website addresses is a tough task. For instance, how do I reach Hindustan Lever's corporate website? Should I try 'hindustanlever.com', 'hindustanlever.in', 'hll.com' or even 'hul.com'? – Too many combinations. The simple alternative is to google 'Hindustan lever', see the list of sites that Google returns, and click on the site I wish to visit.

While users are increasingly depending on googling for finding information (on brands or otherwise), search engines are also increasingly including user generated content (blogs, etc) in the result pages. Very often, this user generated content, might even show up on the first page!

This is where undesirable sites or blogs with negative or libelous content are attracting, hijacking and shaping opinions of the searchers. If I search for 'share khan', the 5th result in Google attracts my attention and my opinion is shaped up forever after reading the post. It becomes difficult for any corporation to neutralize an opinion formed in this fashion.

Kinds of Phrases

Search phrases on corporates can be categorized as brand words, negative words and research words. For negative phrases (icici sucks), one can expect negative results; for phrases pertaining to research (icici bank reviews) it's ok to expect some negativity along with the positives; but for brand phrases (icici bank), finding negative results is a bad brand association. The brand becomes synonymous with the negativity – "ICICI Bank - A bad experience for many", "Share Khan or Sheer Wimp?", etc.

Situation Abroad Research abroad tells us that 29% of the search engine results pages for Fortune 100 companies for neutral phrases, contain at least one negative mention in the first page. [http://www.97thfloor.com/blog/29-fortune-100s-are-letting-google-tarnish-their-reputation/] Gartner says that by 2010, criminals will control the first page of Google search results, inject negative or libelous posts and extort funds from organizations. [http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=531407]

Is it a problem?

Currently, due to the comparatively low penetration of Internet in India, this isn't a problem for everyone here. But at the same time, with an increasing population logging onto the internet everyday, we cannot ignore it for long. Studies abroad tell us that online sales largely depend on third party reviews. Sites like 'Mouthshut' do help to shape up prospective customers opinions and encourage them to ask tough questions before accepting the offer from brands. For instance, Mouthshut has 2.2 million users, and the site occupies close to 25% of the first page real estate. Imagine the influence it has on your prospective customer. There are at least 20 such sites in India occupying the first page at various levels in various domains, and there are also individual blogs – A particular post on Arjun Prabhu's blog [http://www.arjunprabhu.com/blog/archives/2005/04/27/icici-bank-a-bad-experience-for-many/] which was written in 2005, has more than 800 comments, with the last comment written in Feb 08'. The sheer popularity of this blog ensures that it appears on high positions for searches related to ICICI. These new age information models are shaping up opinions of current and future customers.

Is there a solution?

The only solution to tackle with negative results is to outnumber them with positive results. Corporations need to ensure that for their positive, neutral and brand searches, positives show up higher in number, and higher in position than negatives. Of course, for negative searches, the negative results will always take first place.

To propel positive results and to remove negative phrases, a brand could among other things:

- Push down the negatives by techniques such as conducting SEO for the desirable sites
- Approach the negative authors and sort out their issues, thereby curbing any further negatives from them
- Sue them for libel
- Complain to search engines to pull down the results, if the copy has malicious intent

Now what?

It seems only a matter of time till mass consumer brands will face difficult situations in answering to the information savvy population - well informed prospects, vigilant customers & scoop hungry journalists - unless they are adequately prepared and systematically work towards an internet visibility management exercise.