Guest opinion: Malcolm Gooderham from the SXSW festival
15 Mar 2012
The SXSW festival is famous for, among other things, showcasing the shape of things to come. For example, Twitter was 'discovered' here in 2007.
During the early stages of the Arab Spring a little over a year ago, Vodafone attracted a huge amount of negative publicity for appearing to co-operate with the old Egyptian regime of President Mubarak and against street protesters in the weeks before he was forced out.
The SXSW festival is famous for, among other things, showcasing the shape of things to come. For example, Twitter was 'discovered' here in 2007.
In order to grow, brands require trust. The world's greatest brands are those trusted by their consumers, their employees and manifold other stakeholders.
There was an enticing row over ethics last week at the Holborn offices of Bell Pottinger. It took place between Jimmy Wales, co-founder of online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, and Chime boss Lord Bell.
Print and broadcast journalists have the laws of libel drummed into them and are aware of the expensive consequences when their copy is a bit too close to the line.
Kenneth Cole is a bona fide New Yorker who sells very nice clothes. Last week, the successful designer tweeted this: 'Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo - KC.'
Facebook's continued resistance - at the time of writing - to putting a 'panic button' on its site to deter the exploitation of children is, in my view, a reputational own goal.
The online 'free for all' is dramatically ending as new media meet the old reality that true value carries a cost.
IT servers and PCs account for 0.75 per cent of carbon emissions, compared with airlines' two per cent, says Nick Rappolt.