I no longer work for Porter Novelli, but I can tell you a little about the thinking behind the programme. This information will necessarily be somewhat out of date now.
People were, in fact, encouraged to come up with their own phrase; I don’t think we ever really pushed a company-wide disclosure statement. That would have been a bit small-print-y, and we wanted people to express themselves, and fit the statement to the context. If you search on (say) “I work for Porter Novelli”, you’ll find somewhere in the region of 3K search results. My own disclosure statement said something like “I head up digital planning at Porter Novelli, the global public relations company. If my opinions reflect those of the company, then I’m probably doing something right.” But it would change. On Facebook, for example, it simply said “Employer: Porter Novelli.”
“the global public relations company” thing was my fairly half-assed attempt to help our SEO rankings for those search keywords and qualifiers. If people were going to be lazy and simply copy & paste the disclosure statement, why not get some SEO benefit where possible?

Hope this makes sense.

I googled “I work for Porter Novelli, a global public relations company.” today and find about 9 links and a few tweets.

Does this mean the policy has been revised to no longer require this disclosure? Or does it mean that P/N has seen the wisdom of going underground? Or does it mean Google isn’t very good at finding this particular phrase?

We have a network of “ambassadors” across our many offices — all of whom have actively fed into this project. Everyone else; colleagues, clients and competitors have had a chance to share their thoughts on this and other blogs.

Did any employees have a say in developing the policy with you?

But the perception on Twitter from many users was that while poorly executed, they really liked that Skittles was trying to get into social media and relate to people who are savvy social media wise. So there was a level of respect, which leads to opinions and impressions being formed, and a reputation for “being for the people.”

So when you talk about social media guidelines, you’re talking partly about managing how people perceive you. We do that every day anyway, why should our social media or work selves be exempt?

The clause has to go. I don’t think we can have a policy that “recommends” or “suggests” — I think things need to be pretty black and white.

Perhaps we should abandon the policy, and just go with guidelines?

On the flip side – and using your example of the person using their real name in the fetish community – it’s a thorny one. Adhering to a strict ‘declaration’ policy online could force them into declaring where they work – and would that work for either your company or them? After all, we are all human, we all have different interests and there is nothing wrong with belonging to a fetish community. Whether the company sees it like that is questionable, but I’m certain that a company which forced its employees to act anonymously when engaging with such communities would quickly find itself mired in a fair few tribunals. I can see it now – ‘Gag Orders for Fetish Community’

Unfortunately, I don’t think there are any hard and fast rules. There are times when transparency is absolutely essential, but I don’t think that laying those out in stone is easy, and perhaps even possible!

but, i am a bit confused. you said i shouldn’t worry about my facebook page, but if an employee had something inappropriate on their facebook page intermingled with the statement that they work for porter novelli, wouldn’t that cause a problem just as someone commenting on a blog, or writing something tasteless in their own blog? or are you making a blanket statement simply saying that anything you do online needs to be done with caution and with the best interest of porter novelli at mind?