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January 28, 2008
boingboing sorts out Ford Mustang Club social media confusion
By Charlie Kondek
boingboing's Cory Doctorow has an insightful take on a recent kerfuffle between a Ford Mustang fan club, Ford Motor Company, and Cafe Press. In a nutshell: CafePress told the car club they could not use images of Mustangs in their fan materials. But then Ford let CafePress and the fan club know that this was, in fact, allowable, and a misunderstanding involving the legal wing of Ford. Doctorow's conclusion:
- There's a couple of interesting lessons for Ford and CafePress to take away from this. For Ford (and companies like it), the lesson is surely to tighten the reins on your legal department. When they send stern letters to online service providers that threaten legal action, the natural outcome is that OSPs are going to get gun-shy — and they'll tell your fans that they can't do anything and blame it all on you. The usual overkill approach from corporate counsel will come back and bite you on the ass.
For CafePress, the lesson is to take your customers' side when the law is with them. Even if Ford did tell CafePress to kill the BMC calendar, they'd have been wrong. The BMC calendar is legal — even without Ford's blessing — and when you protect yourself from legal liability by shutting it down, you incur PR liability by seeming like a bunch of candy-asses who can be bullied into submission by a memo from some white-shoe legal goon from a Fortune 100. Word gets around.
Posted by Alicia Dorset at January 28, 2008 11:00 AM
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