Andrew McAfee has a great post up on something he calls "The Illusion of Brand Control". What does he mean by that? This describes the current reality for any reasonably well known brand:
What's more, if some of the external voices become as popular, or perish the thought, more popular than your official voice, then they're going to show up high in organic (as opposed to paid) search results. For example, I just typed "Hummer" into Google. The second result is the Wikipedia entry about the vehicle, and the fourth one is a site full of user-submitted photos that are not likely to please the brand's owner.
That's pretty much the size of it. You can try as hard as you want, but once you're well known, you just won't be the only (and possibly not even the loudest) person talking about your brand. Letting go and monitoring - and responding in an appropriate way to any outright falsehoods that might get traction - is the only real answer.
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