I just read an article in AdAge written by Freddie Laker, Director of Digital Strategy at Sapient. He describes a situation that taunts the most impulsive among us. Those who cannot bear to let an uninformed writer and simply wrong piece of information float around out there in the nethersphere of cyberspace need to: STOP. REFLECT. PONDER.

As Freddie, (I can call you Freddie, can’t I? We’re both in this together here.) points out, sometimes drawing attention to a naysayer plays right into their original intention: drawing even more attention to their comments. His conclusion, in this case, ignore the tweet where a clueless reporter unaware of the role Sapient has played in the development of interactive marketing calls them “complete clowns.”

I can’t think of, immediately anyway, an industry where this kind of situation arises more frequently than in hospitality.

You sleep, you know how a hotel should be run. You eat, so you have every right to dictate how a restaurant should be run, how a dish should be cooked, served. Most people agree on that premise, or else we wouldn’t be witnesses to the success that is and has been Zagat‘s and CitySearch and Yelp.

That said, yes, as a guest you have a right to your opinion and are free to post it wherever you can find nowadays, whether it’s Yelp or an up-and-coming I need to add to the list, BooRah.

The problem develops when someone who is talking out of their hat has a clever or funny or distinctly credible way of phrasing things. Then that business’ reputation is at risk from a negative review that may have gone viral, if only in the sense that it influenced subsequent reviewers pushing them to be undeservedly panned to such a degree.

It’s happened to me, in fact, and I am an owner of a restaurant and a consultant to other ones, so I should know better. Sigh.

So, oh wizened readers and writers of AdAge and of Splash, Then Ripples, when then? When do we step in? What are our options to stem the flood of negative comments to our profiles and reputations when in an industry where people naturally turn to community reviews by their fellow guests?

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Rather than write a post here in response to an article I read in Mobile Crunch about an unscrupulous PR firm caught posting positive reviews, I responded on Mobile Crunch. Then I realized that this topic I grapple with often in this business and in life in general AND it only says Facebook User. Huh? So if I use Facebook Connect to respond on peoples blogs, it only shows my name if the person reading is signed into Facebook.Yeesh.

Here’s the article’s URL : http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/08/22/cheating-the-app-store-pr-firm-has-interns-post-positive-reviews-for-clients/#comments

And here are my comments. . .

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Funny, I was JUST talking to my client about TRANSPARENCY yesterday.

This is PR, people, the bad side of it. This aspect of PR is what helped convince me to leave it as my first career years ago. (I was in healthcare PR before the FDA came down HARD on the pharma companies).

Yet today, I embrace the possibilities of connecting with customers, clients, et al. through Social Media to have actual conversations. As a Community Strategist I listen, share, and connect versus just broadcasting messages like in the OLDEN days.

But, there will ALWAYS be those looking for loopholes (what did YOUR tax returns look like? ) and we just need to consider the source and learn to be a bit more, ok, a LOT more, cynical about the motivation behind providing certain info than we ever used to be.

Why MORE cynical? It’s a lot easier to look authentic these days. We all should consider the importance of the HOT word of the year: TRANSPARENCY now that it is SO easy to research the validity of info by tracking back on the internet.

REVERB got caught, but there are so many marketers (and companies themselves!) still out there that will keep doing this in every industry including music, food, beverage, cars, hotels, gadgets and on and on.

Yes, it’s disconcerting to know that people feel that they need to deceive to sell . . . especially if they know that others are also doing it. So . . .they do it, too, it works for them, until they get caught. And then they’ll figure out another way.

That’s why we should ALL look at reviews and such, whether online or offline: TV, Radio, Newspaper, Magazine, etc., with a grain of salt and then take the plunge and BELIEVE or not based on how authentic we consider the source.

I don’t always expound on issues like this, but this one hit a nerve and I will probably blog about it SOMEDAY soon.

Until then, feel free to follow me at pinedaferet on Twitter where I discuss social media, culture, biz dev with digressions into other interesting stuff.

Here are further followup comments I made to specific fellow posters: