In a cruel twist, the first casualties of the Everyday Hogwash contest may be project’s sponsor, SunRocket, and GMD Studios, the agency driving the project. High-profile blogger Steve Rubel, who just yesterday announced that he was one of the judges of the Googlejuice machine contest, has very publicly pulled out, stating “The Everyday Hogwash contest plays into [the] ‘online lynch mob’ meme that I have been trying to refute. I am going to back out as a judge. It’s simply not consistent with how I feel about the overall balance of the blogosphere.”
Steve’s change-of heart was driven by a well-worded missive by Andy Beal, who may win the first great irony award of 2006 for his post. Beal:
“How many of you were offended with the Forbes article that labelled bloggers as an ‘online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective.’
Well, contests like ‘Everyday Hogwash’ certainly don’t help. The contest encourages bloggers to complain about businesses in hope of winning prizes. That’s terrible.
Why do we want to encourage just the complainers? Why reinforce the negative image of bloggers? Surely the sponsor SunRocket could get the same publicity by encouraging both negative AND positive comments?
I think this reflects badly on SunRocket, so, ironically, consider this my entry to the contest.”
The particulars of the contest may be flawed but…
The biggest problem in business is that we don’t face the truth. We discourage debate, we punish those who bear bad news, we only remember things that support our positions, and we make it clear (implicitly) that everybody better play along or suffer terrible consequences.
As a result the top decision makers and investors don’t discover that the business sucks until it has been sucking so long that it will take a miracle to regain customer trust and grow revenues again.
One way to get ahead of this I think is to listen to those who we’ve disappointed, even those who would slander us.
The reason is simple. Our supporters keep our shortcomings to themselves. But complainers and competitors hold a maginifying glass to our failures. And there usually is a grain of truth in their negativity. If we can find that grain we are better for it.
Sorry to go off topic…