OK, so it’s 15 years since Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. And, one would think, that commercial organisations would be pretty savvy on how to use it to get information out there to the likes of you and me.
Yesterday, as you probably know if you’ve been reading my blog meanderings, I went to watch the Amsterdam Canal Parade. Last year, Shell in the Netherlands took a chance and sponsored its GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender) employees’ network to put a boat in the parade. It was a great success, and yesterday as a result (I think) the Shell boat was joined by boats from employee networks in other major companies: IBM, ABN-AMRO Bank and the ING Bank.
I was curious to see how all these companies (Shell included) would handle the public message that they were comfortable with the fact that their employee networks were participating in the Canal Parade. So I went to each of their web sites and typed in "Canal Parade" into each of their search engines. And do you know what I found? Yes, you guessed: Zilch, nada, nothing…
What a missed opportunity! Now, it’s quite likely that these companies had some sort of press statement deep in their media relations offices, which they would refer to if they were approached by the mainstream media. But the fact that they couldn’t be bothered to get it out onto their public web site would seem to indicate that they are all still a long way from understanding the cluetrain manifesto. They need to wake up. The last time I saw this head in the sand approach to marketing your message was the Brent Spar fiasco of Shell. I’m disappointed that they at least do not seem to have learned a lesson from that bruising experience.
Geoff Coupe's Blog 
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