Is Google's CEO a Child Abuser? No, But Don't Ignore These Cartoon Threats

(MoneyWatch)  Is Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt a child abuser? Of course not, but this satirical cartoon from privacy group Consumer Watchdog hints that he is, in the sense that the search giant offers free goodies to kids and then steals their privacy. The video is part of a trend: skewering CEOs with online animation that approaches professional quality.

Other recent targets among America's corporate titans include eBay CEO Meg Whitman (albeit as part of an election campaign), PositiveID (PSID) CEO Scott Silverman and, of course, BP CEO Tony Hayward. Silverman is joined by Goldman Sachs (GS)' Lloyd Goldman, Monsanto (MON)'s Hugh Grant, and Raytheon (RTN)'s Bill Swanson in this video, in which Satan interviews potential vacation replacements.

Cheap animation technology has made it increasingly easy for protest groups to produce sophisticated-looking movies criticizing top management at controversial companies. Because cartoons are inherently entertaining, they can potentially gain a larger viral audience than a simple on-camera rant and are cheaper to make than a fully reported documentary. The PR problem is compounded by the fact that it's extremely difficult for CEOs to strike back at cartoons. Doing so only draws more attention to them.

Not everyone buys Consumer Watchdog's Google video. The group, which wants to establish a do-not-track database for people who want to surf the web anonymously, actually uses Google's tracking data itself. And some of the claims are overblown -- Google doesn't have "full-body" scanning technology, as the video suggests, yet.

Perhaps the more serious weakness is that none of these videos is very funny. From management's point of view, therefore, these things are like the canary in the coal mine. It's a matter of time before an advocacy group generates a truly hilarious CEO cartoon, and the BP and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) debacles show how quickly public opinion can oust a chief executive. Yet how many boards of directors can say they have a communications plan in place to counter one?