Today, those protesters can upload their messages to a web site, send an email message to fuckedcompany.com, or post a note on Vault, and reach more viewers in a second than the folks with the signs reached in a year.

Remember the movie Roger and Me, Michael Moore's 1989 pseudomentary about the effects of General Motors closing a manufacturing plant in Flint, Michigan? That's the prototype for a web-based variation targeting Amazon called 21 Dog Years: Doing Time @ Amazon.com by aspiring actor/playwright Mike Daisey. After his non-disclosure agreement elapsed, Daisey wrote a play, starred in a short film, commissioned some merchandise, and generally energized his career by mocking his former employer.

This is going to happen to one of your clients. Soon.

Over the years, Mainsail has had more than a few similar experiences with our clients, too. For example, in 1996, CBS was purchased by Westinghouse, a world leader in the construction of nuclear power facilities. This caused dozens of anti-nuke protesters to erect websites with titles such as "Chernobyl Broadcasting System." However, we were able help CBS close many of these sites by threatening to sue them for illegal use of the CBS "eye" logo and other trademarks. We didn't question their right to broadcast their opinions, but they couldn't use David Letterman's "Top 10 List" as a motif.

Along the same lines, we started working with SmithKline Beecham's (now GlaxoSmithKline) Vivarin alertness-aid brand in 1995 to build it a presence on the web to reach out to college students, a key market. During our preliminary research, we discovered the "Vivarin Lyrics Server," a database of song lyrics that a college student had named after our client's product following an all-night coding binge fueled by the popular caffeine supplement.

But instead of running the CBS trademark-infringement drill, we thought, "hey, this is pretty cool," and convinced Vivarin this was the perfect marketing vehicle for reaching our target audience. It also made the brand look like a hero for not coming down hard on the guy for illegally using the name and logo, so we began negotiating with the site's owner for Vivarin to become its official sponsor.

Unfortunately, five years before anyone had ever heard the word "Napster," the lawyers advised us that the "Vivarin Lyrics Server" was probably violating the copyrights of the songs' authors and publishers six ways to Sunday. Alas, we were forced to advise our new friend that he couldn't use our brand name for his database anymore. His college shut him down soon thereafter thanks to the enormous traffic the site generated (hey, we were right!). However, you can still find hundreds of references to the original version on Google and other search engines.

A few weeks later, the same client called with a different problem. Seems that a punk-rock band in Philadelphia was calling itself Thorazine, the trademarked name of SmithKline's anti-psychotic medication. Because of our success with the Vivarin Lyrics Server, the lawyers (our new best friends) asked us to contact the band and ask nicely if they would please stop using the brand as their moniker, or at least misspell it amusingly (i.e., Thorazeen). We did, and the lead singer told us to do something sexual to ourselves that is not anatomically possible. It seems the band was eager for a big corporation to sue it for publicity purposes. Ignoring our strenuous protests, that's exactly what SmithKline did. A week later, well, here's what the band itself says:

We got a "cease using our name" letter from SmithKline about two years ago. (Our lead singer) hit the net with the news, then all hell broke loose. A local entertainment paper wrote about it first. Then the daily papers picked it up and sent it over the Associated Press wire. ABC news radio picked it up, then TV news. We wound up in magazines like Newsweek, New Republic, and Playboy. Because of the press we had lawyers offering free counsel, which was cool because we could not afford a good lawyer. The press actually helped a lot because they portrayed us as the poor punk rockers that the big giant corporation was picking on. Smith Kline threatened us but never pursued the suit because we became more trouble than they wanted to deal with! At this point, they've never pursued the suit so the longer we have the name the less they can do about it. The little guy sometimes can win!

Note the second sentence. Alas, we told them so.

Like any crisis communications plan, one size definitely does not fit all. However, when it comes to Internet protests, Mainsail can work with your team to determine the best course of action for a given situation, and then help implement the proper response (if any...see Thorazine above).