Jon Monsarrat brings “General Electric and Citigroup Power” to Expose Cyberbullies

[genesayssitdown.livejournal.com]

Posted May 17th, 2012:

"Cambridge, MA ( prsync ) May 17, 2013 - Jon Monsarrat is bring the same consulting services to fight cybercrime that he has used to advise top executives from General Electric and Citigroup. Through previous consulting jobs, he helped executives at GE Trade put together an import / export offset program to help them make sales worldwide. And for Citigroup he worked to design for them an "active bank system". Now he is bringing that power to expose cyberbullies, with a twist: two new patented technologies. The previous press release "Jon Monsarrat, $160 Million DotCom Icon, to Expose 100 Cyberbullies" dated May 8, 2013, was sent out with incorrect information. First, due to a miscommunication when the press release was being written, the venture is not part of Monsarrat's Hard Data Factory, and Rickland Powel l is not a contact. Instead the service is part of Monsarrat Consulting, his private consulting practice, and does not involve Rickland Powell. Second, due to a separate miscommunication, the press release stated that the new venture launched with partnerships. That was in error. The new venture does not launch with any partnerships."

Read the full press release here: http://prsync.com/monsarrat/jon-monsarrat-brings-general-electric-and-citigroup-power-to-expose-cyberbullies-542401/

Comments

[samcoren.livejournal.com]

Serious question: Why not just try to change your name instead of going through all this and further dragging the one you were given in the dirt? It doesn't seem too difficult in MA at least, and considering this guy has enough money for an attorney for all this stuff couldn't he just focus their attention on getting a really good petition for name change together? http://www.lawlib.state.ma.us/subject/about/name.html

[jikamens.livejournal.com]

JonMon has spent years building a persona for himself online. Yes, you can insert all the jokes you want here about the persona he has built for himself that he doesn't want, but that's not all of it. All of his business successes -- real or not -- all of the projects he brags about, all of his bravado about being a successful entrepeneur and consultant to Fortune 500 corporations, all of his contacts... He uses these to make his living. His personal business model is based on his personal branding.

If he changes were to change his name, then he would have to start building it up all over again. He wouldn't be able to tell people about Turbine, or Hard Data Factory, or Wheel Questions, or any of his previous consulting gigs, because those would all link him to the old name he would be trying to leave behind.

Starting over is hard. I can understand why he wouldn't consider that an option.

[keithn.livejournal.com]

I don't think that is a practical solution given that he relies on the good aspects of his reputation for employment. Remember, he is a "$160 million" "dotcom icon." For any business venture he undertakes, he needs to point to things he has done in the past, which is going to require him to give up his birth name, which is going to result in people finding things like this thread. You can't find work in the tech industry as a 40-something with a blank slate. By the time you are in your 40s you need a long list of accomplishments.

As for fixing his current reputation... in the big picture, we're still in the early years of the Internet and in the infancy of social media, so these are uncharted waters. The best strategy is probably to use SEO to bury the bad stuff under a mountain of other stuff, and it looks like he is doing that. But this lawsuit is one the worst thing he could have possibly done. The Streisand effect is well known, and what is happening right now is exactly what he should have known was going to happen.

I don't buy, by the way, that this was to start a business venture of exposing "cyberbullies." I think that was added on after the fact as damage control.

His best option right now is to drop the lawsuit. Things are bad, but things can always be worse. He needs to put the shovel down. What is out there is out there, and it isn't going to be sued off the Internet. If he drops the lawsuit, I bet people quickly lose interest in the topic and new negative content stops being created.

[duffless2323.livejournal.com]

Because trying to figure out why people do the things they do is likely an exercise in futility. It harkens to my all time favorite expression, "You can't reason someone out of an opinion/decision that they didn't reason themselves into."

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Serious answer: the optimum PR strategy for when there are unpleasant (to you) discussions connected to your or your business's name online is to try to dilute them with tons of positive online mentions. Joining the sponsors of a popular charity event is one way, starting a blog that gives useful professional updates/advice is another, and there are lots more. It's PR 101.

What Mr. Monsarrat is doing is like PR Schwa. To quote Ron's lawyer quoting Wolfgang Pauli, it's not even wrong. On a scale of right to wrong, it's puce; on a scale of effective to ineffective, it's banana peel.

But I would never change my name, because this is my name. So I sympathize with Mr. Monsarrat on that count.

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

My thoughts exactly. I devoutly hope Mr. Monsarrat will retain the services of a PR consultant who can help him find a way to live this down via associating his name with positive Google hits.

[oakenguy.livejournal.com]

Really?? This seems totally backwards to me. I hope that either he a) learns from this, takes a big step back and reboots his life in such a way that eventually legitimate positive news takes the place of what's on Google now, or b) anyone looking him up immediately finds out about the lawsuit, his freaky letters, and his harassment of innocent people. He doesn't need a PR consultant; he needs a therapist.

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

He doesn't need a PR consultant; he needs a therapist.

Well, I wasn't going to comment on that, on account of I'm not qualified to judge other people's mental health or whether they should seek care for same. I'll go so far as to dust off the language I learned in grad school and assert that the person under discussion is presenting with behaviors which are consistent with the ability to benefit from a therapeutic situation.

(good heavens, that's exhausting.)

Regardless of whatever other actions he chooses to take, Mr. Monsarrat does have a PR problem. My hope that he takes reasonable action to resolve it (such as consulting an expert) is directly tied to my equally devout wish that he'll abandon the unreasonable (IMHO and only my O) actions he's currently taking.

[gingicat]

Yeah, what's confused me the most about all of this is that he's generating all this bad publicity when generating positive publicity is so easy.

[thetathx1138.livejournal.com]

I literally write about doing this and when and why to do it every damn day. It's like having a case study detonate right in front of you.

[ifotismeni]

Hahahaha YES, it really is.