When Personal and Corporate Web 2.0 Brands Collide - Advertising Age - DigitalNext

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When Personal and Corporate Web 2.0 Brands Collide

Ford's Scott Monty Provides a Glimpse Into the Blurry Lines

Earlier this year I gave a talk on something I believe is an emerging trend whether we like it or not: the idea of everyday people spending countless hours building and managing their reputations online. I made the comparison of this equity-generating behavior to that of brand building. Ordinary people having micro influence in this macro medium we call the internet.

Since I only had 20 minutes for the talk, I missed out on very important part of this phenomenon: the potential risks and downside of this activity as it can relate to your full time profession -- especially if you are not self-employed. Take Scott Monty, who currently heads up social-media initiatives at Ford. If you go to Scott's Twitter page , you'll immediately notice a dichotomy between Scott Monty, the individual, and Ford, the company he works for. Ford's logo is evident all over the page and even hovers over Scott's "avatar," which shows up in thousands of Twitter streams globally. Scott has more than 12,000 followers on that social network alone.

Scott was well known in the social-media space prior to his employment at Ford (which probably helped him get the job) and uses his network to talk about work- and personal-related issues. The lines that separate the two are blurry. Recently, Scott's been receiving some criticism over how he handles this delicate balance between his brand and the brand he works for. To pull a recent quote from one of the blogs:

"... if Scott Monty wanted to show that he was really doing this for Ford, he'd open up a Ford Twitter account -- an idea seconded by another social media site -- to use daily for ...

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