If you are going to claim your client’s social media ID, don’t do it like this

Jan 24, 2010 by Dirk Singer

Most agencies, ourselves included, urge clients to claim their brand IDs on social networks. Here’s how not to do it.

Ad Agency Carat (via @thefounder), wanted to take back the Facebook URL for Harman International (the speakers and headphones people).

The only problem was, it had already been registered by someone…genuinely called ‘Harman’ (Harman Bajwa based in Vancouver, Canada).

The agency promptly contacted Harman Bajwa to inform him that they were “working with Facebook to reclaim the username”, but that they’d be happy to take it off his hands in exchange for ‘product.’ So, what – some free speakers? Apparently Carat had tried this in the past with the person who owned twitter.com/avtr (when they were promoting the film Avatar) and it worked.

Harman declined the free speaker offer. Facebook then got involved, telling him he was in violation of their policies, “which should have a clear connection to one’s identity.” Like someone’s name? Apparently not, the brand claim was stronger.

Following a bit of negative publicity helped along by a Support Harman group on Facebook itself, Facebook relented. The result is a bit of egg on faces all around for Facebook, Harman International and Carat and a lesson to all of us, that should hopefully be pretty obvious.

There are plenty of examples of social media brandjacking by the malicious, mischievous or opportunistic. There are also plenty of cases of simple coincidence where someone also has a legitimate claim, in which case it’s worth treading carefully. Rather than trying to palm them off with a few freebies, before resorting to threats.