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Post date: Feb 15, 2009 7:04:53 PM
The Raydiance Inc. case study illustrates how a single individual can cause great damage to a corporation (Raydiance Inc.), by using only the wrongdoing that this corporation is guilty of inflicting on the individual, and by wisely employing ubiquitous information tools. The fundamental idea is to target reputation, a very important social asset for commercial organizations.
During this project we published the first employment horror story, The Raydiance story, and we designed and executed a powerful story-spreading method. The activity on our Multitude website was closely monitored and analyzed. The results are very encouraging, and we are now refining our methods and preparing to release them to the general public.
Here is an outline of the project
Writing the story - we worked on the language and the structure of the story
The SPRAY - we designed a powerful method for targeted broadcasting, by which the entire ecosystem of the company in cause is effectively informed of the wrongdoings
Effect of the SPRAY - the traffic on our Miltitude website, the behavior of visitors and the feedback received from targeted entities were compiled and analyzed.
The STALKING approach - we monitored online publications about Raydiance, and wherever possible we wrote comments pointing to our employment story.
Effects of the stalking approach - the traffic on our Miltitude website, the behavior of visitors and the feedback received from targeted entities were compiled and analyzed. This part is still under development.
Refinement - based on what we learned we are now improving our methods.
Important observations
The SPRAY campaign produced over 300 unique visitors, the great majority of them belonging to the ecosystem of Raydiance. The Multitude website was not advertised in order to measure the impact created by the SPRAY. The average of pages/visit was 4.22, the average time on the site was over 6 minutes/visitor.
Short-term or immediate interaction between targeted entities within the ecosystem of Raydiance was minimal, and our conclusion is that word of mouth contributes very little to the spreading of the story in our context, at least in the short term following the release of the story. Therefore the SPRAY method must employ direct methods of distribution and must also target entities that have broadcasting power and have an interest in spreading the story (multiplication effect).
One cannot rely on the public media to spread the story, unless something major is involved. Our preliminary conclusion is that media outlets find the benefit too small compared to the risk of being sued for libel. This is expected for a media oriented towards profits rather than community service.
The rate of response is greater for entities that are aware of the targeted company, typically entities evolving within the same industry.
The distribution of number of pages/visit shows great interest manifested by visitors.
Around 20% of targeted entities respond by visiting the Multitude website.
Another interesting observation is the potential to shift the equilibrium of power within the ecosystem. We were contacted by entities that expressed their discontent with Raydiance and based on our interaction with them we conclude that our story will affect the course of their action against Raydiance. This was predicted before we executed this pilot project.
"But the most interesting dynamics arise form a fundamental weakness inherent to market-based economies. In a very competitive industry reigns a hobbesian climate, where economical agents are individualistic and opportunistic: bad news about one company will be picked-up by its competitors and exploited to their advantage."
The public support was also very encouraging.
This technique produces fewer visits on a short term basis. The response of the SPRAY actions was immediate and one of the reasons may be that only interested entities were targeted. The stalking approach will probably produce long-term effects, as search engines associate more and more Raytdiance Inc. with our employment story. One week after the start of this second campaign Google puts the Multitude page about Raydiance on the third page for a search of the terms "Raydiance Inc employment". For a Google search for only the terms "Raydiance Inc" our page comes on the 10-th page. A search for "Mike Armas" produces a Multitude result on the second page, "Mike Armas Raydiance" on the first page, and a search for "Carolyne Martinez Raydiance" on the first page, third place.
This approach is also more labor intensive. We are still collecting data ...
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