I’ve spent quite a bit of time talking about how to create and nurture your brand, engage people in their conversations and grow your business by connecting people. I choose to surround myself with positive thinking people and draw from their energy to pursue my own success. Oh sure, the negative Nancy’s are still out there, spreading all their ill will in the world, I just believe in the power of positive reinforcement and that by rewarding right actions, positive things will come from it.

I haven’t done much video here at jtrigsby.com, in fact this may be the first one… but its an important one. The story you will see could be interpreted as big old bad guys taking advantage of little good guys. They’ll even say it in the vid, but I want you to think of something else as you watch. In spite of being substantially out gunned and out-funded, this Matt & Renee of Rock Art Brewery are not going to go quietly. They believe in justice and the moral foundations of this country. They are the good guys, not because they are being taken advantage of, but because they are standing up for what they believe in. THAT makes them both good guys and worthy of our support.

So check out the vid and then read on below the jump.


A Couple of Lessons From Monster Energy Drink

So what can we take away from this?

One of the tenets I preach all the time is Give More Than You Get. My all time favorite quote from Zig Ziglar is, “You can have anything you want, if you just help enough other people get what they want.” How could Monster Energy Drink have given to Rock Art Brewery in support of their Vermonster Brew instead of acting like a bully? What form would that have taken? Maybe a link from their page over to Rock Art Brewery? Well, they’re not going to do that, so lets do that for them. Lets give a little link love to Rock Art Brewery and Vermonster!

This WAS a no lose situation for Monster, heck it wasn’t even an issue. But now that they’ve made an issue out of it, people are coming out of the woodwork to support Matt and Renee. Will it shut down Monster? Probably not, but they will get some bad publicity out of it… maybe VERY bad publicity. Maybe the publicity will come about because of all the noise generated through social media? Maybe? The one definite is that it is not going to be an issue for Monster Energy Drinks, a bad issue. Even if they relent and withdraw their objection, the damage is already done. But just in case they haven’t gotten the message yet, Visit the Monster Contact Page and tell them what you think. Be sure to tell them that you’ll be telling your friends about this too!

Now that the damage is done, what’s next…

Enter the realm of reputation management. You’ve got to feel pretty bad for the social media and SEO guys over at Monster. All they’re gonna see and hear is negativity about their brand and links pointing away from them. All their work to build cred in the marketplace and get those carefully placed links will all wash down the drain in a matter of days. Why? Because somebody “upstairs” at Monster Energy Drinksdoesn’t want to play nice.

The right way to approach this is to man up and take the heat for a bad decision, then do the best they can to make it right. But that’s something that gonna have to happen up the ladder somewhere. Old Joe Social doesn’t have a chance at fixing that one unfortunately.

I’m sure Matt & Renee from Rock Art Brewery have spent money so far too… so I’d look for Monster Energy Drink to reimburse them 100% for their legal fees. Does Monster HAVE to do that? No, of course not… but they should! (You should mention that in your message to Monster too!)

I’ll keep an eye on this for us and let you know what happens. Feel free to write about this on your blog, take a different perspective, tack or opinion… just talk about it. This is the power of social media… being used for the common good… with nothing in it for me/us except helping out some good, hard working folks.

@jtrigsby

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