Sign of the Times: Clorox Seeks Lawyer for Social Media Issues
Clorox is hiring an in-house lawyer to focus on legal issues surrounding social media.
The company’s ad for a social media legal expert is “rather surprising,” but it’s a sign of the times, Advertising Age reports.
Many companies already use social media to promote their products, and Clorox is no exception, Advertising Age says. The company has Facebook fan pages for Clorox and Brita, uses Twitter to solicit product ideas, and solicits reader feedback on its new blog Understanding Bleach.
A job description posted at JDHunter.com says the new hire at Clorox will be expected to provide legal counsel on managing and securing advertising content “especially as it relates to social media and other Web 2.0 executions, TV and radio.” Among other things, the new lawyer will be expected to draft celebrity talent contracts that apply across multimedia platforms, advise on music and video licensing across platforms, and advise on the application of privacy laws to the collection of consumers’ information.
Advertising Age interviewed Jack Greiner, an attorney with Cincinnati’s Graydon Head & Ritchey who listed social media as a specialty on LinkedIn. He said the in-house lawyer may want to tackle the issue of how Clorox employees talk about the company and its products on social media by writing a policy establishing the ground rules.
The new lawyer would also be wise to counsel against unwise moves that could be used by competitors to gain attention, he said. As an example, he cites the infringement suit filed by The North Face against a clothing upstart called The South Butt. In the end, he said, The North Face became the butt of South Butt’s joke.
