Harnessing the Influence of Wikipedia for Your Brand

Doug Downs (00:07):

Who invented the electric toaster? Until very recently the answer provided on Wikipedia was Scottish scientist Alan McMaster, who created the device in 1883. That's pretty remarkable when you consider electricity wasn't really in homes at the time. Edison produced an electric light bulb four years earlier in 1879. Electric lighting was installed in the White House in 1891. By the way, neither the president nor his wife would touch the fixtures at the time for fear of electrocution. They let the staffers do that. So for McMaster to come up with the electric toaster in 1883. Wow.

(00:57):

And according to those old Wikipedia articles, he sold his design to an electrical engineer who began mass production. The problem with that story, you guessed it, false. That entire article was written by a classmate with help from the real Alan McMaster in 2012 and published as a prank. But because the article stayed up there in Wikipedia for so long, it was soon at the top of the Google search results. It was repeated in more than a dozen books in multiple languages. A Scottish primary school organized a day of activities in McMaster's memory. Children were invited to write journal entries about McMaster and paint slices of toast. McMaster's was even mentioned on a Scottish government website detailing the nation's innovative spirit. Ouch. In 2018, McMaster's name was included in a Bank of England public survey to determine who should appear on the new 50 pound Note today on stories and strategies from bread to branding using Wikipedia in your marketing strategies and keeping things crisp. My name is Doug Downs, and just as we get started, I want to thank Jennyfer Grundler. She's a senior at Florida International University, majoring in public relations. Jennyfer posted a great note on her LinkedIn page about some of the episodes that we've done on generative AI and public relations marketing. Thank you for doing that, Jennyfer. You can follow us on LinkedIn or just about any other social channel. All those links are in the show notes. My guest this week is Riannon Ruff. Hi Rhi.

Rhiannon Ruff (02:55):

Hello. How's it going, Doug?

Doug Downs (02:57):

Excellent. Excellent. You're joining today from Canton, Ohio. No smoky forest fire stuff or anything your way, but how are things generally in Canton?

Rhiannon Ruff (03:08):

Back to our usual status as a little sleepy city? The Enshrinement is all done for the year. So we go from having thousands and thousands of visitors and all these exciting events back to just regular old life again.

Doug Downs (03:23):

And that enshrinement part of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. There's big celebrations in the summer for that.

Rhiannon Ruff (03:28):

Oh yeah, huge. Yeah. The biggest time of the year is the last few weeks of summer here in Canton. We have a balloon festival, we have parades. Obviously there's concerts and the football game. So it's big.

Doug Downs (03:45):

I love it. You have more than 10 years experience helping large organizations Fortune one hundreds navigate Wikipedia. You co-founded two boutique agencies in that time and worked with countless brands and business leaders to update their Wikipedia entries in line with the site's rules and guidelines. So let me start this episode by being a bit cheeky. Wikipedia. I usually tell people not to pay attention to Wikipedia. You're telling me I should?

Rhiannon Ruff (04:17):

Yeah. Yeah. Here we are. I mean, who'd have thunk? I'll be honest. I think when, as a millennial coming up through school and college, we were told, don't look at Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a good source, and I think a lot of people have got stuck in that mindset. But Wikipedia has, in real basic terms here, it has what the search engines love. So all of those tasty algorithms out there that Google is using, Bing, all those things, they absolutely love Wikipedia because it is dense information. It links out to a lot of really good reputable sources and sites. So the search engines really push it right up there. And it has become something that I feel like you cannot ignore if you're in PR and communications. You've got to be aware of it. You've got to be aware what it's saying about you and your brand, and you've got to know how to deal with it.

Doug Downs (05:19):

And you mentioned that, that it's always kind of been regarded as this sketchy source, the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. That's been their type. Well, if anybody, God bless democracy, but if anybody can edit, that could be a problem. It's complicated though. I've read there are about 7 million articles on Wikipedia and fewer than 125,000 regular editors. Do those sound right. And what does that mean in terms of accuracy and stuff?

Rhiannon Ruff (05:51):

So it actually has a huge impact on a lot of things across Wikipedia, accuracy, consistency, and also the types of topics that get covered by Wikipedia. Because I think what a lot of people don't really fully recognize is that the way that Wikipedia works is it's a volunteer community building an encyclopedia. It's basically like you've got Reddit, but all those people who are just asking each other, whether they are in the right, in different situations, are instead trying to create encyclopedia articles. So as you can imagine, you've got all these different individuals. They're just doing this on their own time. They are not kind of beholden to any particular structure in terms of how they do that, when they do that, when they should be making updates to a page, any of that type of stuff. They're just coming in here and they're volunteers and that they're creating this.

(06:45):

And there's not many of them compared to, like you were saying, the vast number of Wikipedia pages that currently exist. So we have this issue, don't we, that every year all of these public companies come out with all their new financial information Who's making that update? If editors have so many pages each that they have to cover, and they're not going to be interested in every single topic. So a lot of the issues that we see on Wikipedia across the board are things like just basic information doesn't get updated about topics that aren't really fascinating to someone. So you can end up with niche areas on the site that are really well developed, and then you can end up with just regular companies that are very large, but they just have not had any updates made to them in maybe almost a decade.

Doug Downs (07:39):

And that's the point of what you're trying to get across here is that they need to, because the search engines, and now with generative AI in its ability to pull things from that, that's important. I want to circle back to those 125,000 editors volunteers. They don't get paid. You're right. A relatively small community compared to democracy is blessed with the idea that everyone gets an equal vote across the board, but 125,000 editors is a bit of control within that relatively smaller community. Can anyone become an editor for Wikipedia? What's that process like?

Rhiannon Ruff (08:15):

Yeah, anyone can decide to do it. You basically have to opt in. And the biggest barrier to entry is just the learning curve on how you do it and what you're allowed to do. And I think that that's the main thing that puts people off is when they get started, it's usually because you spot something in a Wikipedia article about something that you're interested in. So maybe you're going and looking up your favorite bookstore and you notice that it doesn't say anything about what happened to them during Covid 19. And so you want to add that information in. You might not know how to do that. You might not know where to start in order to do that. And there are just so many different pages and explainers and all different things on the site that you have to kind of pass through to start making very serious updates.

(09:05):

So that's the biggest part, I think. But there are, I mean, the community's fantastic. They want people to be part of it. It's just that learning what goes and what doesn't go is a bit of a trial and error process for most people at first. And it can be really off-putting. You might go in and add in a line about that bookstore that, and it's based on your own knowledge, and someone just comes in and deletes it because they've seen it pop up on their task list of, they have things called recent changes patrol. And so they'll see that and they'll be like, oh, there's no source there. And they'll just remove it. But to you, that brand new editor, you're like, oh my gosh. Well, I just tried to add something and that didn't work. And I would say only about maybe one in 20 people who attempt something like that might actually stick around to see how could I have done that differently And let me try again.

Doug Downs (09:56):

Interesting. So Wikipedia has been around since what, 2001? Somewhere in there?

Rhiannon Ruff (10:02):

Yeah, early two thousands. Yeah.

Doug Downs (10:03):

It seems longer to me, but it uses a collaborative software known as a wiki, which were all the rage in the early two thousands. Now, I don't know that I hear the term wiki as much anymore, and that facilitates the creation and development of the articles. You're saying there are ways that brands should and should not engage on Wikipedia? Simple question. Can I just go to the site? You've kind of convinced me that I want a Wikipedia page for Stories and Strategies. Why would I not get into the search engines? Can I do that? That would be great marketing. Can anybody just go and do this?

Rhiannon Ruff (10:38):

No,

(10:40):

No. That's the double-edged sword here is that Wikipedia has created something, not meaning to do it, but they've created something that is really desired by companies for that impact on search, the ability to have that information readily at hand for AI and all those things. But they also don't want just anyone to have a Wikipedia page. You've got to be encyclopedic. There has to be a reason that you should have a Wikipedia page. And there are some strict rules about article creation. So who should have a new page on Wikipedia? And the main thing it comes down to is how much has been written about you in the media, in published books from reputable publishing houses and peer-reviewed journal articles. So Wikipedia really prizes those media sources and academic sources they want to see. Has something written about Stories and Strategies in depth that they talked all about you, Doug, and what you've done for the industry, all the achievements that you have. Have they given us a unique hook in any of that coverage as to what makes you and noteworthy amongst all of the many organizations that are out there?

Doug Downs (11:59):

So you need a certain degree of earned media before you can earn the Wikipedia page.

Rhiannon Ruff (12:05):

Exactly,

Doug Downs (12:06):

Exactly. Gotcha. How do brands get it wrong on Wikipedia and any examples?

Rhiannon Ruff (12:13):

Oh my goodness. There are so many and there's different ways of getting it wrong. So I think one of the main things that people do is just assuming that they should have a Wikipedia page and diving in and trying to make one for themselves. This is actually a bigger mistake than you might think because Wikipedia editors, for everything that happens on Wikipedia, there's a permanent record of it. So if you go and try to create a Wikipedia page for yourself and you're not ready to yet, you'll get declined or the page will be removed. But then there's a record of that happening. If you keep going back and trying again and again to get yourself a page, you can end up having your topic blocked from the site. There's a thing that editors can do called salting, and it's if you're a gardener, that term will make sense to you.

(13:08):

If not, perhaps not. But it's basically the idea of salting the earth so nothing will grow. And it's a similar thing is that they will create a block around that topic that you want to create your page for so that it is not possible to make a new article about that topic in future. So that's one thing that's obviously a very extreme example of what can happen there. More likely you're just making it harder in the long run because editors will get more and more skeptical of you having that Wikipedia page. So even if you reach the point where you do get some good earned media, and it might be feasible for you to have a Wikipedia page, maybe you're right on the bubble, editors are going to be more likely to say no, because they're going to see all the times that you broke the rules in the past, tried to force through a page, and they're going to say no.

Doug Downs (14:00):

Interesting. Can you think of any companies off the top of your head that have run into an oopsie when it comes to publishing on Wikipedia?

Rhiannon Ruff (14:09):

Oh my goodness. I'm not going to name and shame on trying to create a page, but I only like to call out ones that have had media coverage. I feel like they're already out there. They already know they've done. Yes. Fair enough. North Face, in the last few years, they had a campaign where for them, clearly the folks who are putting it together, it made a lot of sense to them. They were like, this is going to do exactly what we want it to do. This is going to have, we're going to get the visibility for the brand that we want from this. They didn't think about Wikipedia's rules at all when it came to it. So what they did was they went around trying to place images with their branded materials in, within Wikipedia articles about different related topics. So on the page for backpacking, for instance, it would have a new image that they'd uploaded to Wikimedia Cummins, and they went and added to that page that had a North Face jacket and North Face backpack in it.

(15:15):

And they almost got away with it, except that they went out and did a big case study, and it was published in a bunch of PR related outlets. And a Wikipedia editor spotted it and was like, oh, no, excuse me. Hold on one second. Because when they had done this, they'd replaced images that were perfectly fine. There was no reason to replace 'em. It wasn't like they took a poor image, replaced it with a better quality one, and at no point did they disclose what they were doing. And this is a huge no-no for brands on Wikipedia, if you want to get involved on Wikipedia, you have to be transparent. You've got to disclose that you're there on behalf of that brand. If North Face had come in and said, Hey, we see that there's a lack of really great images on some of these articles.

(16:05):

Our brand's been doing photography for years in all these different locations. We'd love to donate some to Wikipedia. Could we add some? I feel like that could have been a really big win for the brand, but instead, all those images got removed from these articles because they didn't disclose to editors at all, and they didn't ask, and they didn't make a request to make those changes, which is the other thing that you need to do as a brand. You can't just go in and start editing and changing things that are related to your brand or that are intended to be promotional.

Doug Downs (16:38):

You know what this actually reminds me of hearing you describe this is you have an awful lot of influence and power in the hands of relatively a few, 125,000 editors who have so much control. This kind of sounds like old media, the newspaper back in the seventies and the sixties, and earning your way above the fold to capture the headline. Is that accurate?

Rhiannon Ruff (17:03):

To be honest? Yeah. I think that that is, and it's very strange because as well, these are not trained individuals. When we talk about Wikipedia editors, these are folks from all different walks of lives. A large number of them are students. I once, several years ago, was quite surprised to realize that a very well-spoken, if you can put it that way, about someone who's typing, you're seeing editor I was interacting with was actually a senior in high school. So that's the other part of it too, is that not only do they have this power, but these are not folks who have received a lot of training, a lot of that kind of background that professional journalists may have in terms of how do you interrogate a source? How do you know if this information is true? So a lot of what they're doing is just absorbing Wikipedia's guidelines.

(18:01):

Some of them have professional backgrounds that can help them with this. There are some academics who can contribute to Wikipedia, which is wonderful. So obviously they bring that rigor to it, but they're really having to take these guidelines and use those to frame everything within their own limits of their knowledge about how to decide whether a source is reliable or not. How to decide whether something should be included in article or not. And the big thing that comes in a lot is bias, natural human bias. If you're skeptical towards a topic, it's very hard to write fully neutrally about it, to not weigh more critical sources higher than you might do otherwise, to not consider positive details to be promotional, for instance. So yeah, there's a lot that makes Wikipedia this very precarious balance, and editors are very aware of this too, that community are all kind of self-policing in that way. They're trying to kind of balance each other out, but it's imperfect as all these systems are, as journalism is so

Doug Downs (19:12):

As democracy is. Right. Yeah.

Rhiannon Ruff (19:15):

It's a great parallel though, I think, thinking about Wikipedia in that same kind of way.

Doug Downs (19:21):

I really appreciate your time today. Thank you, Rhi.

Rhiannon Ruff (19:23):

Absolutely. Thanks, Doug.

Doug Downs (19:25):

If you'd like to send a message to my guest, Rhiannon Ruff, we have her email in the show notes, stories and strategies as a co-production of J G R Communications and Stories and Strategies podcasts. If you liked this episode, please leave a rating that really helps. Maybe tell Wikipedia. It was good. One more favor, if I could ask, share this episode with one friend. Thanks for listening.