Posts tagged carter ruck

‘Trafigura’ – the name that The Guardian dare not say, despite previous reportage – is now a trending topic on Twitter, meaning that it has gone into the stratosphere as far as word of mouth is concerned.

At the time of writing I’m seeing around 200 new tweets per minute that mention the company.

One slightly worrying aspect is that Twitter appears to have removed the ‘#trafigura’ from the trending topics. We’ll monitor this throughout the day. Nevertheless, ‘Trafigura’ without the hashtag is seen in the trends, as is ‘Carter-Ruck’, the company’s legal representatives.

This tidal wave of tweets makes for particularly bad PR, given the banning order against the newspaper. It’s a bit like an artist achieving a Radio 1 ban, which can result in chart success. What you seek to suppress only generates further interest. 

It really does show the power of social media in spreading word. PRs and legal eagles take note. As far as keeping this under the radar, well… this really is an epic fail. Carter-Ruck’s presence on Google Maps has started to attract negative reviews. It could be the tip of the iceberg, forcing the firm into a massive clean-up operation.

Now for some further reading…

• You can see Trafigura trending on the excellent Trendsmap.
• Joanne Jacobs has posted an excellent article called ‘How social media can guard against the misuse of libel‘, replete with lots of juicy links.
• Here are two original articles by the Guardian and BBC on the Trafigura investigation.
• Finally, here’s the trailer for the seminal 80s B-movie ‘The Toxic Avenger’!

[Image by Shht! on Flickr, various rights reserved]