• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, January 23, 2012

During the Google+ panel question and answer section, a social marketing executive from Texas Instruments asked if any of the panelists had some unexpected advice about Google+’s hangouts. In particular, she wanted to know if they had any advice about handling teenagers who like to go into the hangouts and “flash themselves.”

Hmmm, the law of unintended consequences, eh. Sounds more like chat roulette to me, but I guess if you create a new open platform, people are going to open their kimonos, right?

As it turns out, the phenomenon is not so new, and not so unexpected that these savvy brand marketers haven’t already anticipated, and planned for this kind of user behavior. And interestingly, they’re borrowing a tactic from an old medium: television’s broadcast delay.

Intel’s Jennifer Lashua suggested, “a couple of second delay,” adding that, for the time being, brands need to coordinate that with Google+, because it’s not “a native offering,” but it can be done.

In fact, Coca-Cola’s Laura Houghton said that’s exactly what Coke has been doing for its hangout. But she added you have to do more than that, and do it, “Not only on a delay, but have monitoring associated with that that helps us with comments or backlash that happens after the hangout, in terms of use of images, “ etc.