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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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…

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.

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.