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Here is some interesting evidence that badvocacy exceeds advocacy. If you go to Fortune’s Most Admired Companies section on the Fortune web site, you will find that people post their thoughts on whether the top most admired companies deserve the kudos or not.  Fortune asks readers: What do you think of the corporations on Fortune’s top 20 Most Admired Companies list? Should they be in the top 20? Tell us what you think. The best replies will be published here, and possibly in a future story on CNNMoney.com.

As of this writing, there were 156 postings. We did the analysis one week ago when there were 129 comments. Over one-half (54%) of the comments in our analysis about the top 20 most admired companies were negative vs. over one-third (38%) which were positive. The remaining 8% were neutral. The comments are pretty interesting and are certainly a peek into what people think about companies. As our research on advocates and badvocates shows, badvocacy gets spread more frequently.

As an example, here is a positive one about Costco:

“I was a 20 year kid when I started working for Costco. Almost instantly I was looked at as a celebrity in the town I worked. People would stop me on the street and ask me about Costco and tell me about their love of the store. In the eight years I worked there I was wa paid well and given full time employment. I worked in the regional office and learned more about the company then I ever thought I would. I know that they are not perfect and have some improvements to make but they do a good job taking care of their employees despite pressure from Wall Street to limit their compensation. I personally met the CEO. I bought in the company philosophy that the member comes first and I felt good about making sacrifices for company (like time away from my family and not getting everything to make my work life better). Costco is truely an innovative business model that could treat their employees a lot worse but they don’t because they chose not to. Needless to say I drank the Kool-Aid and 4 years away from the company I still shop there every week just to remember how it tastes. If Costco doesn’t deserve to be there no company does.”

  
Here is a negative one that is referring to recent problems that Southwest Airlines has had with the Federal Aviation Agency about flying planes with safety concerns:

“Southwest + FAA = Not a trusted top 20.”

Badvocacy often rules.