You’ll recall that in the wake of firm-wide redundancies in March 2009, in which the firm laid off 89 staff, the Blake Dawson Wikipedia page was hijacked. The following comments briefly appeared on the page:
‘The partnership of Blake Dawson, the sixth-biggest law firm by revenue in 2008, is considering cutting up to 100 staff in a bid to slash costs and preserve profit. Blake Dawson is the first top tier law firm in Australia to announce anticipated redundancies during the 2009 economic downturn. While other major law firms Allens Arthur Robinson and Freehills have assured staff that there will be no redundancies, partners of Blake Dawson announced on 24 February 2008 that they would sack up to 100 staff instead of reducing their individual profit share. The firm’s partners receive an average of $850,000 each per annum.’
These comments were quickly removed, but the troubled Wikipedia page has yet again been altered, this time by hilarious references to a homosexual porn actor using the same name “Blake Dawson“:
In 2007 the firm underwent re-branding, and as part of this project, shortened its name to Blake Dawson [1]. The name change drew some attention from the local press and the Australian Financial Review, a respected business newspaper, published a story about a homosexual pornographic actor who shared the same name. Blake Dawson, the actor, featured in “The Diary” in 1982 and “Spring Semester” in 1985. The law firm still continued to proceed with the name change after the story was published.
Not only did the firm continue with the name change, but it collected a coveted award for doing so. Rebranding website www.rebrand.com considered the shortening of the firm’s name from Blake Dawson Waldron to Blake Dawson as one of the top 100 rebrandings of 2008! In the rebrand.com summary of the rebranding, the following is written:
Challenge – The firm wanted to stand out both for its excellence at law and for its distinctive personality.
Strategy – Principals created a new brand strategy, which centred around the theme “Excellence with Rapport”, a stand out look and feel…
Hmmm… we wonder whether like his corporate legal namesake, Blake Dawson the homosexual porn star also has a “brand” that has a “stand out look and feel”…
And we should thank our anonymous Blake Dawson (law firm) spy who tipped us off to the Wiki page with the following comments:
Checkout the wikipedia entry for Blake Dawson. There’s a new paragraph about how the firm shares its name with a gay porn star. The porn star name thing is old news but this is the first time it’s been mentioned in Wikipedia. Blake Dawson’s Wikipedia entry now looks pretty sad with the mention of porn stars and redundancies.
How does your firm “look and feel”?
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This isn’t new and hardly a hijack. Check the edit history for the page and you’ll see it was added in February. But perhaps you knew that anyway
Hahaha. It’s all true too. IMDB lists Blake Dawson’s movies. So does various other porn and movie websites.
Let’s see if someone tries to edit it out of Wikipedia!!
Let’s not forget Blake Dawson, the porn star, in all of this. How does he feel about sharing his name with a second tier Australian law firm?
I suspect that someone at Blake Dawson thought it would be a great idea to make a Wikipedia page for the firm. Businesses need to know that Wikipedia isn’t a marketing tool. Anyone with information to contribute (good or bad) can update the page. The porn star reference is factual information so I can’t see what’s wrong with it.
LOL!! I agree with Reader. It’s hardly a hijacking but it doesn’t make the history of the firm look good.
“Erection with Rapport”.
Is the lack posting on mid-tier firms a reflection of where the Firm Spies ply their trade, i.e. at the Big 6, or is it a reflection of their inability to produce miserable employees?