Gaia Capitalist

Scenario: You are the public relations director for one of the world’s largest, most successful business enterprises. Your boss is one of the wealthiest, most powerful men on earth. After 30 years of hard work, he has built his brand into one of the most recognizable and valuable logos in history.

For some time now, your boss has been investigating, researching and investing in a new company and a new project. Let’s call this new company “Virgin Fuels” and the new project “Gaia Capitalism”, for arguments sake. Millions of dollars have been spent on planning, advertising, promotion, and public relations. Finally, the press releases have been sent, the interviews have been given and your boss is now on public record announcing his personal business philosophy (Gaia Capitalism) and his new bioenergy investment company (Virgin Fuels).

Unbeknownst to you, however, is the fact that your web and Internet department has not bothered to secure the domain names or publish a website for Gaia Capitalism or Virgin Fuels. An independent, enthusiastic web publisher notices this and buys the names and starts to publish an online “news” site promoting not only your boss and his new company but also his new passion – renewable and sustainable energy – all very important information.

Since your own Internet department did not establish a presence in cyberspace, the independent blogger’s sites start to rise – and hold - in the search engines for your boss’s identity, the Gaia Capitalist , his new business and personal philosophy, Gaia Capitalism, and his new company Virgin Fuels.

What an odd situation this has become. A poor, middle-aged, middle-class American single woman, struggling to survive in the Pacific Northwest, has assumed the identity in cyberspace of arguably the wealthiest man on earth. She even wrote a letter to your corporate offices introducing herself and telling them about her sites in the search engine rankings.

So what do your Intellectual Property lawyers do? They insult her, they patronize her, they demand she transfer ownership of her site virginfuels.org, claiming it has no value or purpose. They accuse her of cybersquatting and cyberpiracy and when she won’t back down, they leave an anonymous nasty personal comment on her blog.

The problem for you, as director of public relations, is that these sites are still online and are still in the top rankings. Whenever your boss even speaks the words now “Gaia Capitalism” or “Gaia Capitalist” or “Virgin Fuels” it is the independent web publisher sitting alone through the night working at her computer who has captured your boss’s identity in cyberspace. If he sat down today and Googled any of these keywords so closely associated with him in the physical world, he would find the Gaia Capitalist blogger documenting to the world that all is not as it appears ….

Out of over 1.1 million entries on Google, her site is #3 (after CNN) and the new company’s official website is #6.

Check out what she’s done on MSN search engine. For Virgin Fuels her news site has captured #1 and #2 and your own official company website comes in at #3 and the new company’s website closes at #4.

For “Gaia Capitalism” her site is #1 on Google and your boss is nowhere to be found.

This can go on forever.

Moral of this story? No matter how big and powerful you are, you can’t buy your way into the search engines and you can’t pay to get out of them.  GC 02.24.07  20:56