The phenomenon of the Streisand effect is that it kind of prevents access to have an opposite result or to elude the heedless outturn of sketching considerable attention towards it. The term originated for Barbra Streisand, the singer, in a situation, wherein Streisand handed down Kenneth Adelman, the photographer for posting the singer’s pictures on his website. Until this class action, very few people in Streisand were aware of it. The class action brought up the attention of millions of people. This expression, ‘The Streisand effect came into existence in 2005, when Mike Masnick, wrote in his article for a website in an attempt to remove some photos from a photo collection on the website. The phenomena circumvented reverse psychology and gained momentum with the leap of digital media. As it may be, a crucial remark, on social media, can create antagonism and demur.

Does this affect any business?

The Streisand effect can be a negative sensation since it blatantly can reveal covert intentions to the business world, which can be detrimental to the covert intentions and scale-up business.

Though the intention is plain simple not letting know some consumers and the media certain facts, figures, or information. A few examples from the industry establish this effect. Uber, when it came into the business arena, the cab drivers took against them, thinking they are losing out the business to Uber, through disruption to the traditional norm or through advanced digital service. So in an attempt to reduce traction, taxi drivers protested the Uber app in London, Europe. Subsequently, what Uber saw was a tremendous increase of 859% in downloads of their app during this protest and a lot more sign-ups than ever before.
In a similar stance, the High Court ordered to prevent users from accessing the Pirate Bay website, due to the issues of copyright infringement. This apparently scaled up the unique users to around 12 million. In similar circumstances, Samsung’s attitude toward safety concerns was in question when a YouTuber’s Galaxy S4 phone caught fire spontaneously and the customer officiated the complaint and uploaded the video of the incident. Samsung stumbled by simply offering the complainant a phone replacement and failed to deal with the issue at large. The Youtuber’s second video exposed Samsung’s clumsy stand, on this and that video went viral wherein the YouTuber spoke about Samsung’s attitude vehemently.
In a comparable situation, the world-famous owner and brand, Ralph Lauren, send enjoining letters to Boing Boing and Photoshop, involving the photo of a model of a fashion brand. It caused a Streisand effect when Lauren lost the legal battle when the court deemed it as fair use of the photo.

Lego building bricks had a similar effect when Lego called a German vlogger to take down the video that the vlogger posted which instead of mentioning a competitor product, mentioned it as a Lego product. The vlogger was obliged to take it down, but at the same time went ahead to publish the lawyer letter in response to the cease and desist from Lego. In the bargain, due to the Streisand effect, Lego gained a lot of flak, and the competitor gained an advantage to scale up the business.

The palm oil usage in KitKat bar, one of the products of Nestle, was highlighted in a video by Greenpeace, that was provocative to some and supporters flooded the social media negatively about KitKat. The reaction of Nestle, to the comments, worsened the situation creating a scaling down Streisand effect to Nestle.

Streisand effect – Scale Up/Scale down business.

Streisand effect may augment (Scale Up) and reach a much wider audience scaling up or abridge (Scale down) or face plenty of backlash or outrage, which results in diminishing business, scaling down. Thus, businesses ought to be prudent to manage reputation and goodwill, not to be on the negative side or to be victimized by the Streisand effect. Nevertheless, such ripples may cause the business, its brand image, PR budget, bad press, loss of trust, and customer relationships, which may be irreparable or even to an extent of customers boycotting the products and services.

Should any business eschew the Streisand effect?
To build upon goodwill and repute, with ease, businesses need to remain aware of the Streisand effect and its repercussions. At the same time, if businesses have a solid plan to execute, a strong PR team, and social media presence to maintain the brand reputation, then the issues created by the Streisand effect can be minimal or can be dealt with efficiently, without causing much damage. Today, an unwise unaddressed social media mention may immediately create a Streisand effect. Content curation, search engine optimization, can help push negativism and its related comments to top it up with positive stories, copyright infringement can help manage material infringement and content removal techniques can to some extent help mitigate negativity. Reputation management is the key.

In the grand scheme of events, a sagacious stand for any business, is to address criticism at the earliest so that cynicism does not suppurate.