Behold the dangers of social media: having your brand “brandjacked” by some random fella with a grudge. Bank of America’s late adoption of the Google+ Pages trend allowed someone to create a fake company page that denigrates the BoA brand in any way possible.
A screenshot of a Google+ Page branded Bank of America, on Tuesday, November 15, 2011.
From status messages like:
Starting tomorrow, all Occupy Wall Street protestors with Bank of America accounts around the country will have their assets seized as part of BofA’s new Counter-Financial-Terrorism policy. You will sit down and shut up, or we will foreclose on you.
to page slogans like
We took your bailout money and your mortgage rates are going up
and fake comments, anything and everything is possible on BoA’s fake Google+ Page. The actual BoA page is here, but no updates and poor information make its presence look even worse than the parody page.
The fake BoA page was created November 8, 2011, and today, seven days later, the page is still up, with over 1000 followers and about 700 Google+ likes; when the new official BoA page has a shy presence, with no updates, poor business information, and a low resolution logo. In short: the most unprofessional Google+ Page so far.
Despite the PR nightmare faced by BoA, this is a sign for Google+ to straighten up their act. If anyone can impersonate a brand, the whole purpose of Google+ Pages is defeated.
ATTENTION: Weber-Shandwick & Burson-Marsteller – Contact Google and get this down.