Last night I watched in amazement as senior management from the likes of Google (owners of YouTube) and Liveleak appeared on Panorama on BBC and, in my opinion of course, arrogantly tried to justify how they could allow videos of children being violently beaten up, or people vandalising police property, on to their website. According to the Panorama report, many advertisers whose adverts appeared next to those videos and, in certain instances, racist comments alongside them, have since pulled their adverts after they were made aware of where they were placed. In some cases, the programme confirmed that those advertisers even sacked the agencies that bought the media space for them.

The story has been picked up by the media and YouTube and its counterparts are taking a beating of their own yesterday and this morning e.g:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/30/ninternet230.xml

I was totally shocked and sympathetic to the victims of the beatings in the videos. I was also delighted to hear that brands have pulled their ads and that Guy Phillipson of the IAB http://www.iabuk.net will investigate the matter too – I hope they make their findings public on the site given the likes of Google are a member.

However, the one thing that it did make me want to shout out loud is “I told you so!”. Within our own workshops http://www.markettiers4dc.com/workshops.html at markettiers4dc, we urge caution to brands who get involved in these UGC/Social Networking environments. Yes, we ourselves have run very successful campaigns within the likes of Bebo, but we will only get involved where it is within a controlled environment, creating a profile that we are managing ourselves. The fact that brands allow agencies to place banners and buttons on a run-of-site across a website that blatantly allows the kind of videos highlighted in last night’s Panorama report to me shows just how far we still have to go in educating the communications industry about how to use online effectively within the marketing and PR mix.

We’d would love to hear your thoughts on this matter so please do use our comments section and tell us your views. Also, if you want to attend our own workshop on the rise of Social Networking sites and how best to incorporate them into your PR and marketing then please fill in the form here http://www.markettiers4dc.com/workshops12.html