Jack Yan: the Persuader Blog: And now, the Hong Kong Institute of Marketing gives you malware, says Google

And now, the Hong Kong Institute of Marketing gives you malware, says Google

At the Medinge Group today, after a message from CEO Stanley Moss, we decided we should check out the Hong Kong Institute of Marketing, which ignored our correspondence about their holding a competition called Brand with a Conscience. Some of you may remember we were rather concerned about its closeness to our long-held Brands with a Conscience, and wrote to several people at the Institute. This was never acknowledged, which I regard as unprofessional and discourteous, especially if the Institute wishes to be seen in a positive light.
Imagine my surprise when looking up the HKIM today and clicking through using Google:

Google alleges that the HKIM site has infected computers with malware. When I investigated this further, I came across a PDF from a computing company, which said the Institute did not have a particularly reliable email list removal system (which has since been remedied).
I don’t know what sort of outﬁt HKIM really is, but my impression has gone from poor to extremely negative. An organization that acts questionably over a name to one that delivers malware?
The good news is that one of the worries we had, about the HKIM awards occupying quite a few of the top Google search placements for the term “brand with a conscience”, is no longer as major a concern, though we don’t think this excuses them. Of the top 10, the Chinese ones only occupy one place (Medinge’s manages nine), and of the next 10, they occupy four.
It does reiterate, of course, that any casual search of Google would still turn up the ofﬁcial, original Brands with a Conscience award more—and that there is no way the Hong Kong Institute of Marketing was unaware of our scheme. Its silence, in the hope that the matter would go away, paints a picture of guilt. And the 25 per cent hit rate of the ﬁrst 20 entries Google for the “other” award scheme continues to confuse those who might think that the HKIM edition has something to do with the Medinge Group, when in fact it does not.

Posted by Jack Yan, 10:22 permalink