Re: UKNM: Is it just me....

[Steve Johnston]

Iain,


I have no vested interest in attacking your double-speak.


It would be great if your humility was genuine, but you are pouring hogwash

upon hogwash. The utter disingenousness of "and we simply felt that it

should be brought to the attention of parents, toy manufacturers and the

public in general." is breathtaking.


Your puff for Envisional led the journalists to state that porn sites were

deliberately using branded toy names to lure children to their sites - quite

for what purpose I  have no idea; are children now being issued with credit

cards?? 12,000 examples of this !! Do me a favour!


Now you are claiming that you were doing it for the good of humanity, and

that if we all go and put the word Man and Action into a search engine we

will get a porn site or two. Erm, we should be surprised at this? And I love

your offence at the disingenuousness of your client's competitors - classic!


Envisional have disgraced themselves in front of the industry they seek to

serve by using the crass tactic of exploiting consumer fears about internet

safety to promote what appears to me now to be highly suspect abilities in

this space. I hope the press coverage you got for Envisional generates them

plenty of leads as there will be very few coming from the highly influential

audience of UKNM.


Me, I don't believe that all news is good news - the words Industry and

Disrepute come to mind - and I'd fire you.


Incidentally, I am a parent of three kids under the age of ten.


Steve Johnston.

----------------------------------------

e:

stevejohnston [dot] co [dot] uk

t: +44 (0) 7050 6050 33

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----- Original Message -----

From: <

ifrazerhuk [dot] brodeur [dot] com

>

To: <

uk-netmarketingchinwag [dot] com

>

Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2000 12:02 PM

Subject: RE: UKNM: Is it just me....



> Hi everyone,

>

> I confess, it was Brodeur Bfour that worked on this story.

>

> A number of points. Firstly, none of this is 'bollocks' Of course we all

> know that there is a lot of pornography on the Internet, and some of those

> pages are inevitably going to contain the names of children's toys

> (sometimes innocently). That is not the point we were trying to raise. The

> fact is that if you search for "I love Santa" or "I love action man" on a

> popular search engine, several of the results near the top of the list are

> pornographic. This is not uncommon, as Envisional's research proved. Nor

> should it be ignored, and we simply felt that it should be brought to the

> attention of parents, toy manufacturers and the public in general.  We are

> not trying to claim that the pornographic sites are using these names

> maliciously, simply that they are irresponsibly misusing the names of

> brands, many of which are of interest to children.

>

> Many of the guys at Envisional are parents themselves and were outraged

> that this kind of tactic was being employed. Most of the journalists we

> talked to felt exactly the same way (and many of them, in doing their own

> research to establish the veracity of the story, quite easily got linked

to

> porn sites while searching for children's toys.) If anyone wants to put

> this to the test, they are welcome to do so. We're more than happy to

> explain the nature of the research Envisional carried out and the results

> that we found.

>

> Secondly, I don't think the FT was 'taken in' - Fiona Harvey is an

> experienced journalist who has pushed back stories that she didn't want to

> run far more often than she has taken stories that she did want to run. As

> far as we are concerned, she did a very good job of covering a very

> sensitive story. (By the way, she wasn't the only one 'taken in' - so were

> the Times, the Independent, the Daily Mail, BBC News 24, Sky Business

News,

> etc -  New Media Age actually pushed back on the story because they felt

it

> had been done to death in the nationals......)

>

> Thanks to Rod for coming to our defence. By the way, I think it was

> somewhat disingenuous of Peter Bond to offer an opinion on this story

> without stating that, as he works for a company that is a direct

competitor

> of Envisional, he had a vested interest in doing so.

>

> Iain


[Sam says: msg chopped]



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