Facebook and Hairy and Smelly and, thus, Single Baker & McKenzie Lawyers
If you are the marketing director at Baker & McKenzie, please read the entire article before filing suit. However, keep in mind that truth is an absolute defense. Just joking . . . honest.
OK – now that I have everyone’s attention, let me begin: I’ve been writing about Facebook a lot lately, partly because they have been making a lot of news, but also because I think they have the best chance of really changing the social networking game.
One recent development in the Facebook world that largely went unnoticed (but for this great article by the National Law Journal) was Facebook’s auto-generation of groups for all sorts of entities, including law firms, based on profile information of seemingly affiliated users. So, people who include in their Facebook profiles, say, K&L Gates as their employer could be included in an auto-generated “K&L Gates” Facebook group. The issue is that Facebook is naming these groups using descriptive words found in the affiliated users’ profiles. So instead of just the “K&L Gates” group, it may be the “Saucy K&L Gates Lawyers” group. Hmmmm . . .
While there is some overlap with these Facebook groups and Avvo’s lawyer profiles (based on public information, Avvo creates profiles for lawyers whether they request them or not), I believe Facebook is taking things too far. Rather than simply aggregating publicly available data, Facebook is attributing descriptive language to groups that affiliated users never intended to be attributed to a group. For example, if a Baker & McKenzie lawyer decides to describe himself in his Facebook profile as “hairy and smelly and, thus, single,” those attributes may just be attributed to an auto-generated Baker & Mckenzie Facebook group – the “Hairy and Smelly and, thus, Single Baker & McKenzie lawyers.” Uh . . . Facebook . . . we have a problem.
In a very Avvo-like fashion, Facebook should simply build the groups using very basic data (name, address, affiliated users, etc.), and if an authorized person decides to claim the group they can describe it any way they wish. Facebook’s strategy here is pretty simple. Auto-generate a group with a provocative name and people will feel compelled to claim and maintain it. Again, Avvo with its Avvo Rating has some similarities*, but like it or not we are going to see more and more of this on the Web. All sorts of profiles and groups are sprouting up, and it is every marketer’s choice whether to interact with or ignore them. But law firm marketers should not wring their collective hands over this. I love Fenwick’s confident response to their auto-generated Facebook group in the NLJ article. They describe their Facebook group as a “non-issue,” even though it may be confusing to some clients. I’m guessing the Fenwick math goes like this: We are confident in our brand + no one is going to take it seriously + we like the free marketing = nonissue. Moreover, the Facebook generation is slowly becoming the general counsel generation, so you are going to need a firm Facebook firm presence at some point so you don’t look like a complete troglodyte. Although with many older, less internet-savvy partners driving executive committees, this is not always an easy task for marketing directors.
In the end, Facebook points out that its auto-generated groups are in “beta,” or a trial phase. I’m guessing with enough complaints (especially from lawyers), they will still auto-generate groups but without the dicey descriptive language. This will not make all executive committees happy, but at least they will be talking about and interacting with social media. :-)
The Internet continues to roll. Ignore it or sculpt it – it’s your choice.
* To be clear, Avvo does not assign a lawyer an Avvo Rating to be provocative but rather to actually rate the lawyer’s background in a way that is helpful to consumers. Still, some lawyers find our ratings provocative enough to sue us or at least threaten to do so. I can only imagine the uproar if we took the Facebook approach and named them a “sassy” 6.5, rather than just a 6.5.
