Brand Monitoring Important In Times of Tragedy

The recent Virginia Tech shootings have been splashed across newspapers, news channels and especially websites of every kind. In times of horrific events like this, it is highly important to make sure your website and/or brand is portraying the situation in a light of sympathy and respect.

MySpace is currently under scrutiny due to a mishap of advertising placement on profiles of Virginia Tech students who lost their lives earlier this week. “Shoot the Rapper, win $5,000” banner ads were displayed randomly on their MySpace pages, which MySpace is saying is through no fault of their own.

Shawn Gold, CMO of MySpace, stated, “That’s a random network ad that runs throughout our site, and it’s not connected contextually because we don’t place banner ads contextually on MySpace.”

The fact is, MySpace made the mistake of not monitoring what ads were displayed on what pages in a time of mourning for many people. It is to the point now in our society where even if the ads were not displayed on purpose, your audience is going to take offense to it and that could possibly cause an uproar over something you could’ve easily handled in the beginning.

Brand Monitoring has really come into the spotlight for multiple reasons and the recent Virginia Tech tragedy shows proves another reason to closely keep an eye on what you are putting out on the Internet.

Read the the Article