I’m going to preface this post by saying that in the last couple years, what I have enjoyed the most about working in social media marketing / online PR in London is the openness between everyone in the industry. Despite us all technically being competitors, we connect daily online, share advice and share useful news to improve ourselves.
With that in mind, I thought I would share an experience I had that left a sour taste in my mouth, but more importantly, highlights an old sales practice of calling up your competitors to learn inside information that just doesn’t work in an online world. And surely has no place in this industry – because it’s not welcome, and you’ll get rumbled. So here we go.
Wednesday evening I took a call from someone saying they were a junior marketing exec from Adobe. His name was Angelos Taplatzidis and he said he was calling around to a number of “social media marketing agencies in London and Brighton” to find out how they might be able to help Adobe UK increase their online B2B social media activity, in order to provide his line manager with a shortlist.
I had time only for a brief intro (10-15) min because I had to run to a fairly important internal meeting, but I promised to call him back and pick things up again, which I did. I then rang him back at about 6 PM and spent a further 55 minutes on the phone going through the usual stuff – clients we work with, services we offer, our approach, measurement etc. Nothing we haven’t discussed publicly or on our website, mind.
I had to cut the call just before 7PM, so we agreed to touch base next week and go about setting up a meeting with his boss in Stockley Park. I said I would pop him an email with my details on it, and he gave me his address email address: ataplatz@adobe.com
I then fired off an email and got pinged back with an out of office, that looked suspiciously like that person was away from Adobe and possibly not coming back.
I copied and pasted his name into Google and I immediately pulled up his LinkedIn profile. It said he did work at Adobe until last month. Angelos has since deleted his LinkeIn profile, but in a rare display of forethought I took a screen grab:
His LinkedIn profile said he now worked for Social Media Ltd. as a ‘Business Consultant’. My next move was to Twitter Search then this came up:
So needless to say I was a bit annoyed by all this, learning that I just spent an hour on the phone with a competitor extracting information that we are completely open about online. That’s an hour I wasn’t spending on other billable client work, and an hour that made miss getting home for dinner with my girlfriend (she ate without me, consequently).
I rang Angelos back immediately asked him to confirm his name, email address and that he was currently and directly employed by Adobe. He said he was. I then confronted him with all of the above and a stunned silence followed. He again insisted that he was employed by Adobe and I thanked him and hung up.
The slim possibility exists that he may well still be employed by Adobe but on gardening leave. But then surely that precludes taking up his new role at Social Media Ltd.? I think that’s an issue for Adobe HR to look into. In any event, the nature of his questions and what I found online has made me conclude that he was acting on behalf of Social Media Ltd. on that call – not Adobe. Should Angelos read this, I invite him to clarify things.
A couple days on, and I can’t help but see the tragic/comedic side to all this.
It astounds me that an individual (and/or orgnisation) would employ such a tactic in an industry that is characterised by its openness and understanding of social media. And oh, the sweet irony that everything was so easily uncovered using social media.
In the end though, I wish Angelos Taplatzidis and Social Media Ltd. the very best of luck. I think they just might need it.
UPDATE: On 13 December Kostas Alekoglu, Managing Director of Social Media Ltd. informed me by a comment on this post that the individual in question was employed less than a week ago on a trial basis by Social Media Ltd. and acted independently and without instruction from the company:
This was an unfortunate solitary incident and does not represent the company’s principles or business ethics.
