on 28 April 2009Phorm, the targeted advertising technology that everyone’s been rather suspicious of since BT trialled it on live user data without telling its users first, has launched a website responding to its critics. I recommend it to any PR practitioner who needs to convince a client that responding to criticism is something you have to do very, very carefully. Phorm has done it entertainingly badly.
Adopting a tone of relentless whining, stopphoulplay.com characterises every criticism as a ‘smear’, then proceeds, often without drawing breath, to smear the critics responsible. For example, it’s perfectly true that activist Alexander Hanff has a tendency to rant, and quoting from his unnecessary ad hominem attacks is probably a justifiable way to distract from the good sense they sometimes contain.
Where Phorm goes wrong is in pulling up Hanff for a ‘discourteous’ response to the IPA’s Marina Palumbo, then in the next paragraph describing the FIPR as ‘merely another branch of the hydra-headed gang of online privacy pirates’. Courteous?
This unforced tactical error is repeated on every page of the site. Ironically, Phorm does have a bit of a point*; many of the voices raised against it come from the same clique. But somebody got lost on the way to the moral high ground.
adambanksdotcom @Herring1967 "watching on screen"?! That's not a subeditor, it's a butcher with English as a third language