Imagine for a minute buying a ticket to an event that has an attendence of 50,000.  While there you take a bunch of pictures, maybe you Tweet some of them, maybe you write a quick blog post from your mobile device. When you get home, you upload the pictures and write a blog post about the event and your experiences there. A little while later a lawyer sends you a letter ordering you to take down the post and pictures, maybe even telling you they own the rights to your content.

This week two very different organizations’ policies about participant depictions of their events were heavily discussed in the news: The Burning Man Festival and the SEC Conference. For different reasons (one concerned about privacy & control, the other about profit and partners like ESPN), each of these entities are essentially saying that they might actually own your recollections and stories about their events.

Many brands are beginning to wade into the social media space and are wondering how best to adopt social media and interact with consumers in a new way.  I would argue that these two examples illustrate the worst in social media policy. The key is to allow consumers, participants, people to have the conversation they’re going to have anyway:

  • If it’s positive for your brand or event, leverage it and try to ride the wave of good will to help promote.
  • If the attention is negative, do what you can to learn from the message being spread and correct the problem. Often proactive approaches create enough goodwill to turn the PR problems around.

The great thing about social media is that more and more people are getting the chance to participate and tell their stories. From a research and branding perspective, it opens a whole new insight into consumer behavior and attitudes. Attempting to control the conversation, regardless of the motive, will only backfire.

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