In today's world, on the Internet, anyone can create content for the whole world to read. You can create a Web page on a Web hosting service called "Merce product page". You can create a company profile on a site like LinkedIn.com and call it the "Merce Technologies Pvt Ltd Company profile" (this is what had happened in our case). You can create a FaceBook profile called "Merce".

This causes very serious problems. Any page on the Internet which claims to be "the company profile of Merce Technologies" or "the Merce product page" or any other page about Merce Technologies HAS TO BE AUTHORISED by the company's top management. If this is not done, and if all such pages and content are not strictly audited by the company's management (in this matter, I personally read every word), then the company's branding and image can go to the dogs.

The issue of where, when and how to represent the company in public media is of such paramount importance that experienced CEOs of large companies spend millions of dollars consulting experts, devising strategies, and planning media exposure. In our company's case, every word said (or not said) about our company can affect our customers' impression about us, and can break potential business deals if the wrong impression is communicated. At the very least, if someone creates a company profile in some arbitrary Web hosting service, then the company management needs to know about it so that the contents can be updated as soon as the facts of our company change. For instance, if an old profile says that our company has 18 people, and we now have 50, then the old profile will harm our company. And if some arbitrary employee creates such a profile, our management will never know about it and will therefore not update it the way we update our Website.

In the case that we accidentally discovered, a young officer in our company had created a Merce Technologies company profile on LinkedIn, which is a very popular and critical repository of corporate information. LinkedIn allows anyone to create such a profile page. (I know that this is a ridiculous policy of LinkedIn, but that's how it is.)

This young officer had uploaded some arbitrary image from our Website as the "company logo". It appears that he believes that any arbitrary image with the word "Merce" written on it is a company logo. This officer had also copy-pasted some content from one of the pages of our Website as the profile contents. I did not check whether he had edited any of it. I just deleted the contents. I also lodged a protest with LinkedIn about their policy of allowing all employees to edit the company profile.

Rules

1. You are not allowed to create any page which resembles an official page from our company on any public Website or forum. You are not allowed to create a page on any Website or forum which gives the impression that it is an official statement from the company. The only people who have permission to do this are members of the Board of Directors of the company and any other officer who has been given instructions to do so in writing by a member of the Board.

   The word "public" means not just anonymous readers but also any forum which is open to anonymous members by payment of a fee or by some registration process. In other words, if there is a Website which carries company profiles which are viewable only by registered members unrelated to Merce Technologies, then, for this note, such a Website will be considered a "public" forum. Only those forums where access to content is controlled by Merce Technologies will not be considered "public" forums.

   Note that this rule applies irrespective of the content of the page. The page may not contain anything harmful or derogatory about the company, but such page creation is not allowed, because it takes away the company management's ability to control its public media exposure and brand visibility.

2. You are not allowed to express any critical or negative comment about the company, its functioning, its clients, or any other aspects of the company, in any public Website or forum. Yes, you have freedom of expression guaranteed by the Constitution of India, but the Constitution does not guarantee that Merce Technologies will be obliged to keep you on our payroll if you exercise your constitutional right in a manner which harms the interests of the company.

   You are of course permitted to express critical comments in private forums, e.g. within the company.

3. You are not allowed to communmicate anything about the company or its business, clients, etc, with any member of the media, any journalist, reporter, industry consultant, advisor, market research interviewer, researcher, or any other person who is interested in collecting information about our company.

   This rule applies even if you are saying very positive things about the company. It applies even if you know the reporter as a personal friend all your life. It applies even if the things you communicate are done "strictly off the record." (There are very few journalists left in the world who still respect an off-the-record promise. And when they do that, they only respect promises made to very powerful people, who can destroy the journalist if promises are broken. You and I are not powerful, promises made to us are jokes for journalists.)

Violation of any of these rules henceforth will invite dismissal from service. I am sorry but I do not think some of you understand how seriously you can damage our company's image by taking liberties with such matters. To understand how immature most of you are, just think about the following: Merce has spent more than two years getting our logo registered as a trademark. Companies routinely spend millions of dollars defending their trademark. Yet, one of our officers uploaded some arbitrary and meaningless image as "company logo." We know there was no mala fide, but mere immaturity can be terribly dangerous too. Therefore, there is no option but to take the highest form of penal and legal action against anyone breaking these rules.