How I became Nelson Mandela

Hello, I'm Nelson Mandela.

I registered a Twitter account in his name. I picked Nelson Mandela, but many others were available, including: HughGrant, MattDamon and MorganFreeman. Some of the Ftse100 companies were free too.

Here is my point. You can't protect your brand name online. If NelsonMandela was registered then I could've picked NMandela, Mandela, NelsonM, Nelsieboy etc...If those were all taken on Twitter, I could've used Plurk or Jaiku. I could've registered NelsonMandela.typepad.com or on wordpress or blogger. I could've posted comments as him on any number of political forums.

If I'm really determined to impersonate Nelson Mandela, I'm going to find a way to do it. Likewise, if someone is really determined to impersonate you or your brand online, they're going to do it. This could drive some people crazy. If I could do this to Nelson Mandela what could I do to your brand?

Not much. I can't sabotage Nelson's brilliant reputation with fake announcements. I can't sneakily declare war on RobertMugabe (who's also available – thanks Stephen), and I really doubt @GordonBrown, @GeorgeBush or @JohnMcCain are doing much damage neither. Letting those people bother you, is the same as being bothered about what every mindless critic might think.

If you want to engage, then engage. If you don't, don't. Whatever you choose, you shouldn't worry about something you really don't have much control over.

And don't sweat, I'll delete the account next week.

Comments

[Chris Norton]

Richard, this is very amusing but also quite worrying.

[Chris Norton]

Richard, this is very amusing but also quite worrying.

[Andy]

A well illustrated point Nelsieboy :-)

[Shel Holtz]

You're absolutely right, of course. When Nabisco registered every domain they could think of for Oreo cookies, somebody came along and registered www.iloveoreos.com. But that doesn't mean Nabisco shouldn't have bothered to register www.oreos.com. You can't register everything, but you SHOULD grab the primary trademark names. It doesn't take long and can save grief later.

It's also worth noting that Twitter is going to give all the Exxon names that have been taken to Exxon...which means Nelson Mandela can have the account you registered turned over to him. But that's the grief I'm talking about. It would have been easier to just grab the account himself.

[Stephen Davies]

Personally, I think the great man has bigger fish to fry. :-)

[Charlie Hoult]

Richard
I got to your blog via Steve Waddington. I've got you on my RSS Reader - and have used your Mandela thought about Twitter in a post I've done for Brand Republic.

http://community.brandrepublic.com/blogs/brand_karate/default.aspx

Please excuse my cack-handed linkings on there as they've got new (duff) software for bloggers).

Keep it up! Good blogs

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