20 Responses to "The Two Faces of the Marketing Blogosphere"

• Affiliate Freebies and Marketing Ideas » Blog Archive » The Two Faces of the Marketing Blogosphere says:

  October 26, 2007 at 10:48 pm

  [...] dwalker wrote a fantastic post today on “The Two Faces of the Marketing Blogosphere”Here’s ONLY a quick extract [...]
• The Two Faces of the Marketing Blogosphere at Vevz.com says:

  October 26, 2007 at 11:16 pm

  [...] The Two Faces of the Marketing Blogosphere I have had two interesting online experiences today that have highlighted the two sides of the marketing blogosphere in stark contrast. First DDB Radar. Big Agency launches Social Media arm, which I blogged about a while ago. David Jones comments on how they are not reaching out to the existing comm… [...]
• 

  Steve Wright says:

  October 27, 2007 at 6:44 am

  Couldn’t agree with you more, Doug. The discipline of PR brings a real expertise in crafting messages, collaborating with diverse stakeholder groups and employing a subtle elegance to communications. Jazz that up with a bit of ad bravado and you’ve got a good shot at doing something interesting, relevant and engaging.

  And yes, you are far better suited than most to speak to both sides of the debate. Well put, sir.
• Links for 2007-10-27 « ideas Revolutionary says:

  October 27, 2007 at 1:44 pm

  [...] Big Agency (DDB) launches Social Media arm (Radar DDB) using conversion-baiting post. [via Webwalker] [...]
• 

  David Jones says:

  October 27, 2007 at 6:03 pm

  You are the consummate peacemaker, Doug. You should have titled this post “Make Blog, Not War.”

  So, let’s just say you’ve negotiated a truce.

  Us PR folk are jealous of ad people and their big fat budgets where sometimes the catering bill for an ad shoot is bigger than the PR budget.

  As much as Steve and I have engaged in a little “my agency can beat up your agency” blogging, the debate that these sorts of hyper-opinionated posts spur on are where the learning is found.

  Your analysis is spot on. If you know what you’re doing, you know what you’re doing. If you’re a schlocky spin robot who’s all about the message track, or interested in getting a celebrity in your ad for the Superbowl, you’ll never get the possibilities that exist in the social media world.

  Perhaps there has been no better time for all of our various disciplines to use the term “communications” to refer to what we do.
• Ad vs. PR: can’t we all just get along? at PR Works says:

  October 27, 2007 at 6:40 pm

  [...] so happens to be happily married to a PR person (and new colleague of mine), has weighed in with a great blog post built around a Kumbaya thought: everyone is evolving, no one discipline has the market cornered, so [...]
• 

  DaveW says:

  October 27, 2007 at 8:29 pm

  Do you see blogs, communities, Facebook groups, etc., etc., as just another space for the same old marketing message? It’s just another invasion by marketers of a place in which I do not with the see The Message.

  The only real solution is to leave SMM to the designers. Who has the empathy for the people, the grace of communication, the subtlty of the messge, the appreciation for beauty and that genuineness that is the hallmark of social media? It’s the designers – well, designers who can also write (and there are a few of us)… Nah, social media is far too important to leave it to the PR and ad people.
• 

  Francis Wooby says:

  October 28, 2007 at 6:47 am

  Hi Doug, great post.

  I’m curious, though, can any business initiative–be it social media, traditional media or anything else–really succeed without all members of the team on board?

  Sometimes, people involved in this PR vs. Marketing debate make it sound as if one can function without the other, which is not my understanding of how things work.

  Now granted, I’m notably less qualified to comment on how things are than a lot of people, so perhaps I just don’t have a grasp on the basics.
• 

  dwalker says:

  October 28, 2007 at 9:23 am

  I guess as the ad-hoc PR/Ad negotiator,the best I could have hoped would be to have David and Steve both post here on the subject.

  @Steve – Glad I was right about the tone of your post…

  @David – I can completely understand budget envy, but remember that most of that money is based on big media spends, which don’t really play a factor in social media – So that is what I call a self-correcting problem (over time).

  @DaveW – Glad to have you bringing up yet another important player in this. I think it really depends on the designer whether they should be leading the charge in Social Media. While I know some really strategic designers, they are often not well-suited to the role of crafting a marcoms strategy, structuring the communications flow, dealing with crises, etc. While I am sure some could step up to the task – it isn’t exactly part of the job description for most – unless they are independant and therefore less siloed.

  I also think that you might be getting at the jack-of-all trades aspect of independants, which in a fresh new medium can be really valuable. We certainly saw this in Web 1.0, but remember that many were scooped up or had their high-end clients taken away once the agencies formed Web divisions.

  @Franics – Here, I think you are talking about the old “integration” myth that every agency professes and so few ever implement. The truth (in my experience anyway) that ad peope and PR people rarely talk except through the client. I cannot count the number of times when PR was not at the briefing table when they should have been. At my current shop things are a lot more open between PR and Advertising – which is part of the reason I am with Venture.

  So Francis, I agree absolutely with you in theory, but most clients have brand managers which mostly deal with ad-types and corporate communications people which deal with pr-types. So until it gets more integrated on the client-side it is unlikely to happen on the supplier side.

  Great thoughts.
• Ad vs. PR vs. Evangelists: Who should own social media marketing? at DesignWalk says:

  October 29, 2007 at 8:17 am

  [...] a battle in the agencies over social media. Doug Walker at Webwalker blogs about this battle, and looks for the middle ground between advertising people and public [...]
• 

  DaveW. says:

  October 29, 2007 at 10:02 am

  Unless they are talking about marketing. That’s interesting.

  Maybe I should step back a little tiny bit and ask the question: How can marketers find the evangelists with the organization to blog, and how can marketers facilitate blogging, including convincing the upper levels of management to go along with this.

  Marketers-as-bloggers (unless they are talking about marketing) is scary IMHO. If I said that marketers don’t have a place in SMM, I’d be shooting myself in the foot. But is the role a traditional advertising/PR role? I don’t think so; it’s a new channel looking for new approaches.
• 

  dwalker says:

  October 29, 2007 at 10:40 am

  Dave, I think that Social Media marketing goes way past blogging and I think you are circling around ghost-blogging (or communications professionals blogging on behalf of someone else), which is almost completely taboo in my books. SMM does not just have to be about blogging. In my opinion podcasting, for example, screams out for assistance from communicators and technology people to make it easier for the client, promote the podcast and crafting the actual content, even if they aren’t behind the mic.

  I agree wholeheartedly with your point that traditional ad or PR “approaches” are doomed to failure in this space and do us all great harm. Bloggers are like journalists in some ways and totally different in others, they are also sort of like consumers too, but not. Let’s make a distinction between traditional marketing approaches and the actual practitioners. From my experience, some of the best and the worst SMM is done by PR or Ad people – the best by the ones who are willing to learn new lessons and the worst by the ones who aren’t.

  So is your argument that PR and Ad people have no place in SMM unless they are blogging about their own disciplines? If so, I disagree with you completely there. There is loads of knowledge and expertise in professional commercial communications that translates well into social media and also many lessons to be learned by all of us. Good professional communications people know and respect differences in media channels.
• 

  DaveW. says:

  October 29, 2007 at 11:15 am

  Again, cross-posted:

  I guess I am looking at as ghost blogging (because I’ve been asked to do it – NFW), using a blog as a vehicle for marketing messages by marketing people (“look at us, we’re great” I’ve been asked to do it – NFW), gaming Digg, del.icio.us, etc., and uploading corporate marketing blather to YouTube (again, by marketing people). I’m also involved in “socal marketing” with people who don’t really give a fig about talking with their audience; they only want to talk at their audience, and don’t understand the difference.

  We’re in a unique situation, bring heavily involved ourselves in social media. I don’t think most marketers get SM and the delicate touch needed to approach SM audiences, especially in this early stage. Think how sensitive the webosphere was in 1995 towards the encroachment of advertising and corporate web sites.

  As web design is a different beast from print design, SMM is a different beast from marketing, and maybe I am having the misfortune of working with people who haven’t made the jump.

  Maybe it’s the disadvantage of working with smaller clients. But then, I’m not fighting corporate intertia and control issues…
• 

  Graham Walker says:

  October 29, 2007 at 1:11 pm

  <<>>

  So, just what do you mean by “almost completely taboo”? Why are you leaving such wiggle room?

  Ohh…I think you found the subject here of your next SMM podcast
• 

  dwalker says:

  October 29, 2007 at 1:33 pm

  @Gwalker
  ‘So, just what do you mean by “almost completely taboo”? Why are you leaving such wiggle room?”

  Because I think absolutes in a developing medium are a bad idea.

  Case it point, if the CEO writes it, but the tech guy posts it, tags it, embeds links, etc. is that ghost-blogging? Probably not.

  What about if the CEO writes it based off notes provided by a brand manager or vice-versa? Less clear.

  What about if the CEO writes something, but runs it past legal, marketing and corporate communications and only posts the final “approved” and edited version. Much less clear.

  It is too easy, at this point, to be black and white about social media. This is right and that is wrong. There is also ambiguity over what classifies as authentic and transparent in social media.

  For example:
  Q. Why is is okay that the CEO doesn’t write a speech, but delivers it to the audience?
  Q. Why is it okay that a quote in a press release is never actually said out loud by the quoted person?
  A. Because that is the way it is done and everyone accepts these practices. As such it is too early to say exactly what will be acceptable in social media as it matures, so I leave some wiggle room.

  Personally, I feel very strongly that blog posts should be concieved and written by the person’s whose name is on the blog. I hope this media stays personal and authentic, but the cynic in me says that as more carpet-baggers jump on the SMM bandwagon and push at the ethics to game the system that the grey area dividing black and white will become much less clear. We may even find ourselves tacitly accepting practices in a few years that would get someone crucified today.
• 

  Tamera Kremer says:

  October 29, 2007 at 3:20 pm

  I like my new nickname “Hurricane Tamera”.

  I think your post shifts some goal posts by conflating what I was saying with Radar DDB’s blog post, an advertising agency. I disagree this is a discussion about advertising vs. pr as David Jones’ original post conflates interactive with advertising which is inaccurate. As I wrote on Jones’ blog:

  And here I was thinking we were talking about interactive and social media, not advertising. Interactive is also marketing communications, not merely advertising (at least the way the experts practice it). The majority of the digital projects I have been involved with were not merely ads. In fact, many of them were building communities, as far back as 1998. Yes, building communities around products or brands, but that is no different than social media.

  …..

  Finally – I never said advertising ‘owned’ social media, I actually said that people own the conversation. I’m happy for PR to participate, in fact I practice PR myself for certain clients as part of the social media mix, but if PR practitioners refuse to give credit where it is due and recognize that not all digital marketing was about banner ads, then expect a harsh response.

  True interactive (hence the word) was about interactivity between people and companies/ brands. We strived, through trial and error, and with new technologies emerging, to achieve that. Social networks, YouTube, the fulfillment of the read/write web, etc. all were born from these experiments. Both PR and ad people can learn a lot from the interactive folks (strategy, creative and tech). 10 years of R&D to get to this point in the web is a lot of knowledge to tap into. Conversations are shaped by the technology employed in large part. Understanding that is crucial to learning and adapting to the new social media realities.

  You also mention transparency and that PR has the lock on it. Again, from Jones’ blog:

  @ doug – “And Ad people need to recognize that solid PR practioners better at seeding conversations, transparency and influencing influential people.”

  Even solid PR people practice astro-turfing (most notably in the States, but even H&K was accused of it recently), so I think no one can claim ownership of “transparency”. If we are speaking soley of advertising, we do have truth in advertising standards laws, does PR have a similar code?

  But regardless, the goal posts have changed and instead of speaking about marcom and interactive as this post originally did, now we’re talking about ads vs. pr.

  It’s a good discussion none-the-less, but I strongly disagree with lumping interactive and advertising together. Marketing communications blends all disciplines which is what interactive was/is striving for.
• 

  dwalker says:

  October 29, 2007 at 3:47 pm

  For sure, that was a mis-step of mine to combine advertising and interactive – they are definitely not the same thing. Excellent point, Tamera. My only excuse is that I have spent most of my interactive tenure working at big agencies and often found our wholistic “interactive” thinking trumped by “advertising” thinking. And you know exactly the environment to which I refer, Tamera.

  I don’t think anyone has a lock on transparency, but PR people are definitely making it into more of an expertise than most agencies are, some interactive practioners however do grasp the transparent approach intuitively.

  I think my original post was more in reaction to Steve’s than to your comment and I probably should have made that clear.

  So for the record, I believe that, there is no ideal place for social media to live in the present communications environment. The expertise of PR, Interactive, Advertising, Design and whoever-comes-out-of-the-wordwork-next all have valuable experience to offer.

  Who will the client give the strategic assignment to? One high-profile client would hand it to outfits like Social Media Group who are really none-of-the-above.
• 

  Steve Wright says:

  October 29, 2007 at 5:52 pm

  I think you’ve solved this debate, Doug. None of us are going to win. If and when client organizations and brands do become truly “transparent”, we’ll all be looking for jobs, replaced by a giant wiki that tells consumers the unvarnished truth… maybe we’re already there and we just can’t bring ourselves to admit it… I see dead people, etc….
• 

  Jeremy Pepper says:

  October 30, 2007 at 11:51 am

  Glad that the post is generating conversations in other places – isn’t that the most important thing?

  And, yes, we are all flailing in the dark, but some are having better luck not running into doors, and others are tripping left and right. We need to do what’s right out here, not what’s best for the bottom line.
• 

  Idetrorce says:

  December 15, 2007 at 7:33 pm

  very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
  Idetrorce

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