I’m a firm believer in letting other people do my research. Why should I do ‘original’ work that has already been done. When we do research to assist reputation management a lot of work has been done for us by rumourmonger and rumor debunking sites like Snopes. However, some malicious rumors originate with jealous competitors and radicals and require extensive research to identify the source, intent, and motive.
For instance, rumors that one company or other is owned by the KKK or one CEO or another donates money to the Church of Satan have circulated for decades. However, the Internet have given such rumors wings.
Companies can be destroyed by malicious rumors. A soft drink marketed to minorities in northeastern US cities, was almost bankrupted by a rumor that the drink contained a chemical that would make black men sterile.
Rumors can put lives at risk. In 2005 a rumor spread by cell phone text messages caused violent riots in Pakistan. The rumor was that men would loose their manhood if they shook hands with a foreigner.
In Rumor in the Marketplace: The Social Psychology of Commercial Hearsay (Auburn House Publishing, 1985), the authors suggest a public and forceful denial of the rumor as soon as possible by using solid evidence backed by experts. Sometimes the expert evidence is expert research that debunks the rumor.
In an article entitled Dissing the competition through dirty tricks! Arthur Weiss cites an article that illustrates how a campaign of dirty tricks might unfold. The cited Times Online article is very educational.
More recently, the Canadian insurer, Fairfax, was the target of a campaign of malicious disinformation from a group of Wall Street Hedge Fund managers. The company is now suing them for $6 billion - claiming that their aim was to manipulate the market by creating uncertainty about the company and its future. These include a variety of dirty tricks - false emails and letters, espionage attempts and more.
The main actor accused of conducting the dirty tricks campaign was Spyro Contogouris. Googling “spyro contogouris” brings up more than you might want to know. Especially the claim that Contogouris was working for the FBI.
We do a lot of trademark searches for due diligence and competitive intelligence research. I often contemplate how hard it must be to think-up something original that isn’t utterly ridiculous or just plain stupid.
It seems Dilbert has the same problem.
An archive is a primary source because the contents are documents usually authored by a person with direct knowledge of the topic.
A library is a secondary source because its documents are created from the primary sources.
As much as I enjoy new technology, like wireless networks and Palm Pilots, I often find the solutions our forebearers devised less prone to failure. The lowly notebook and pen fall into this category.
Since the beginning of my professional life, I have carried on a relationship with one type of notebook or another. The lowly notebook has never failed me. I have never lost a notebook or had it stolen. All the important stuff that I must recall goes into a notebook. I usually have several on the go at once — some for specific topics, some for their size and others because of their covers.
Using all these notebooks has evolved into a simple system. Important lists of phone numbers and indexes go on the first few pages. I usually reserve the first four pages for this purpose. All my rough, scribbled notes start on the last page and progress toward the beginning of the book. The legible complete notes start after the list and index pages and finish when they meet the scribbled notes. I write the start and finish dates on the cover along with a description of anything of lasting importance contained in the notebook.
To keep my place in the small notebooks I use a rubber band. I also put two rubber bands over the back cover of the hard covered notebooks to hold extra papers and a few 3″ x 5″ index cards. A small glue stick is always handy to stick business cards, photos, and other important things to the notebook pages to prevent loss.
Writing in small notebooks requires a different script than normally taught in school. This I call police officer italic. I form each letter individually; it is not quite printing and not quite cursive like I was taught in grade school. If I write in any other way, it will not be legible when read months later.
In this computer-obsessed age, a pen and notebook are more portable, don’t require batteries or a power outlet, cost next to nothing, start immediately and don’t crash. Finally, a notebook doesn’t seem out of place on the restaurant table like a notebook computer or even my Palm Pilot with its fold out keyboard.
I don’t believe in ethics. Being ethical is too much work according to the seminar I went to — I’m too lazy for ‘ethics’. I have 3 simple rules instead.
1. Don’t do anything that you wouldn’t do on the steps in front of City Hall.
2. Don’t do or say anything you wouldn’t want published in the Globe and Mail.
3. Don’t do anything illegal because it’s too inconvenient to cover your tracks.
If you’re the type of person who would clout the Mayor on the nose at a City Hall news conference, then my rules (and all the ethics seminars in the the world) won’t help you.
We monitor a wide variety of media outlets for clients. Some of these outlets are state owned propaganda outlets, some are simply moronic. Here’s an example of the nonsense we have to read and pass along to clients.
American radio icon Don Imus disgraced, fired after threat to reveal 9/11 secrets
13.04.2007 Source: URL: http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/89728-Don_Imus-0
Laurie Raye, a property owner from Tacoma, Washington was recently the victim of a phoney ad on Craigslist that invited the public to come in and freely strip the house of its contents and fixtures. The advertisement was on the Craigslist website for two hours before being pulled. Unfortunately, that was long enough for the vultures to find the house and pick it clean.
Its not uncommon to find all sorts of scams on Craigslist, but this takes the misuse of Craigslist to a new level.
The Companies Creditors Arrangement Act ( R.S.C., 1985, c. C-36 ) (CCAA) allows a plan of compromise between debtor and creditors to resolve the financial problems of a distressed company. The CCAA may only be applied where claims against the debtor company exceed $5 million. In short, the CCAA provides the insolvent company protection from the actions of creditors and allows the insolvent company to continue operations while a plan of arrangement is constructed.
To date, CCAA information is scattered across the country in various court offices, without any centralized recording. At the outset of a recent study, Industry Canada estimated 175 cases exist; the study located 219 cases under the act. There may be more that the study did not find.
Currently no requirements exist for debtor corporations in CCAA proceedings to report data or to publicly disclose it in a consistent way. Financial information and pension deficit information need to be reported in a consistent and accurate format. This is particularily important regarding pensions, as unfunded pension liabilities have impelled many recent CCAA filings.
A proposed amendment to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, may force the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy to collect uniform data into a cross-country database.
We hear a lot about the ‘evils’ of ‘pretexting’ in the media lately. If you want to avoid complications involving the use of pretexts, follow my three simple rules.
The three rules:
1. Do not personate a living person.
2. Do not personate a representative of any existing company (or business) or anything to do with government.
3. Do not cause anybody to be concerned for their own safety or the wellbeing of any person, business, company, or property.