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Executive Summary
Italian companies on Wikipedia:a new frontier in public relations
Companies must engage carefully with Wikipedia toimprove their online profile. Research by Lundquistreveals little information is available on Italian companiesand provides a guide as to how they can improve
Google the word Fiat, Bulgari or Pirelli and their entry on Wikipedia willappear as one of the top results, inviting the browser to consult corporateinformation from a website that many perceive as independent andauthoritative, created by a community of millions of internet users.This is one reason why Wikipedia has now become one of the world’smost important sources of information online, accounting for 8% of global internet traffic and receiving around 60 million unique visitors amonth. The website has become a fundamental aspect of a company’sonline presence, playing a key role in public perceptions and reputations.This situation poses a challenge for corporate communicators, who needto understand how the website works and represent themselveseffectively on it. A variety of scandals involving corporate manipulationof Wikipedia articles have scared companies off making any attempt toengage with users of the site. However, as Wikipedia has become such awell-established source, engagement is increasingly necessary.Research by Lundquist shows this is a challenge few Italian companiesare meeting. Although all but one of the 40 major listed companies havededicated articles on Wikipedia, the amount of information available isgenerally limited. Out of a maximum of 18 points for completeness of information, the average company article scored 8.4. The most detailedarticles on Wikipedia analysed were for
Fiat
and
Pirelli & C
.To confront this challenge companies need to change their conception of public relations to an approach that speaks directly to communities, ratherthan to individuals in the traditional media. It demands an understandingof their rules, dynamics and culture. In terms of Wikipedia, this meansavoiding editing your own articles, except to update easily verifiablestatistics, and representing your company using appropriate channels,such as article “talk” pages. Companies should also provide Wikipediaeditors with copyright-free photos to use.Effective public relations with online communities has had provensuccess. Our survey showed the result of
Fiat
actively seeking to have adialogue with the editors of its page and to provide them with assistance:it had the most complete and most-viewed article in our survey.
“Companies should not be afraid to speak to the Wikipedia community. If they approach it in theright way and demonstrate that they intend to help the community, they will be welcomed.” –
George Turner, head of the research
Lundquist’s top five tips foreffective engagement withWikipedia1.
Respect the Wikipediacommunity and make sureyou understand how thewebsite works
2.
Only make edits to yourarticle when they concernindependently verifiable factsand figures such as thenumber of employees, marketcap, etc.
3.
Make copyright-freeimages and media availablefor Wikipedians
4.
Use discussion pages tointeract with Wikipedia editorsand express your opinion
5.
Monitor your Wikipediaarticle for updates andvandalism.
Top 10 most covered Italian(S&P/Mib 40) companies onWikipedia (%age out of 18points for completeness ofinformation in English)
1. Fiat 94%2. Pirelli & C. 93%3= Eni 78%3= STM 78%3= UniCredit Group 78%3= Finmeccanica 78%3= Mondadori 78%8. Impregilo 75%9= Parmalat 72%9= Bulgari 72%
Top 10 most viewed Italiancompany Wikipedia articles(page views in English inFebruary 2009)
1. Fiat2. Bulgari3. STM4. Pirelli & C.5. Eni6. Parmalat7. Luxottica8. Finmeccanica9. UniCredit Group10. Telecom Italia
LUNDQUIST SRL – Piazza XXV Aprile, 1 | 20121 Milan | Tel +39 02 4547 7682 | Fax +39 02 999 85 466 |www.lundquist.it
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The importance to Wikipedia to companies
Wikipedia is important to companies because:
It contains articles on a great number of companies, including all but one in the benchmark S&P/Mib 40 Index
With 60 million unique visitors a month, the site is currently the 8th most popularworldwide
There are 9,142,010 registered user accounts
Articles often have high search engine rankings, with 61% of Wikipedia page viewsoriginating from Google
In the 2008 H&H Webranking Questionnaire, 75% of business journalists, analysts andinvestors confirmed they use Wikipedia
The risks of Wikipedia to companies
There are many risks to companies associated with the open contributions policy of Wikipedia andthe fact that information on Wikipedia is widely distributed. One risk is that companies, failing toproperly understand the rules of the encyclopaedia, will attempt to directly edit their entriesthemselves. These changes will often be reverted and may even be highlighted in the press,resulting in bad publicity for the company. This happened with
Wal-Mart
. Someone working at thecompany changed the Wal-Mart Wikipedia entry from stating that the company’s wages were onaverage 20% less than other major US retailers to being double the federal minimum wage. Anaccount of this attempt to change the article was published in the New York Times (
SeeingCorporate Fingerprints in Wikipedia Edits
, 19 August 2007).Another risk comes from the fact that someone from a competitor may use the encyclopaedia to tryto damage the company brand. This happened when someone working on a computer at the FordMotor Company, on 15 April 2005, changed the article on the Dodge Rampage, a car produced byrival Chrysler, to say that the vehicle was ugly and unpopular.
The research
Our research was designed to measure the presence of Italian companies on the English languageversion of Wikipedia and how well they were covered by the encyclopaedia. We conducted thisresearch in February 2009 and covered all of the companies of the benchmark S&P/Mib 40 Index.Our criteria examined both how the articles were presented, the information displayed within themand their popularity through the number of page views. However, we did not check the accuracy of the information in the article.In order to give some context to our research we also evaluated the Wikipedia articles of the globaltop 20 companies from the FT 500 index using the same criteria as for the Italian companies. Toassess the relative coverage of Wikipedia in relation to other encyclopaedias, we looked to see whatkind of coverage the Encyclopaedia Britannica and Microsoft’s Encarta gave to Italian companies.
“The most important thing for companies is to realise that Wikipedia can boost their international profile.” –
Joakim Lundquist, founding partner of Lundquist Srl.
LUNDQUIST SRL – Piazza XXV Aprile, 1 | 20121 Milan | Tel +39 02 4547 7682 | Fax +39 02 999 85 466 |www.lundquist.it
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The results
All companies had an article on Wikipedia, except
Snam Rete Gas
, which redirected to thearticle on Eni
In comparison only four companies had entries on the Encyclopaedia Britannica and onlytwo on Microsoft Encarta
The average score for Italian companies using our scale was 8.4 points, out of a maximumof 18, compared with 16.1 on average for the top 20 world companies
Italian company Wikipedia pages most frequently lacked photographs of the company, themarket capitalisation, management profiles and links to external websitesThe companies that received the best coverage on Wikipedia were internationally recognisedindustrial brands such as
Eni
,
Pirelli
,
Fiat
and
Finmeccanica
. Non-industrial companies with largeinternational operations such as
ST
Microelectronics
and
UniCredit
also did well. Surprisingly,high-profile consumer names such as
Bugari
,
Luxottica
and
Geox
were not as well covered astheir industrial counterparts and banks such as
Intesa SanPaolo
and
Mediobanca
also finished inthe bottom half of the list.
The coverage of Italian companies on Wikipedia
Position Company Points (%)1 Fiat 17 (94%)2 Pirelli & C. 15 (83%)3= Eni 14 (78%)3= ST Microelectronics 14 (78%)3= UniCredit Group 14 (78%)3= Finmeccanica 14 (78%)3= Mondadori 14 (78%)8 Impregilo 13.5 (75%)9= Parmalat 13 (72%)9= Bulgari 13 (72%)11 Enel 12.5 (69%)12= Luxottica 12 (67%)12= Autogrill 12 (67%)14= B.P. Milano 11 (61%)14= Mediaset 11 (61%)14= Banca Monte Paschi di Siena 11 (61%)17= Italcementi 10.5 (58%)17= Saipem 10.5 (58%)17= Assicurazioni Generali 10.5 (58%)20= Telecom Italia 10 (56%)20= A2A 10 (56%)20= Prysmian 10 (56%)23 Intesa SanPaolo 9.5 (53%)24= Fastweb 9 (50%)24= Geox 9 (50%)24= Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso 9 (50%)27= UBI Banca 7 (39%)27= Banco Popolare 7 (39%)27= Tenaris 7 (39%)30 Mediolanum 6 (33%)31= Buzzi Unicem 5 (28%)31= Unipol 5 (28%)31= Fondiaria - Sai 5 (28%)34 Lottomatica 4.5 (25%)35= Mediobanca 4 (22%)35= Alleanza Assicurazioni 4 (22%)37 Terna 3.5 (19%)38= Atlantia 3 (17%)38= Seat Pagine Gialle 3 (17%)40 Snam Rete Gas 0 (0%)
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