London blogger diamond geezer is one blogger who dislikes the PR & marketing industry:

I’m often annoyed (and mildly pissed off) when some PR weasel sends me an email out of the blue. Sometimes they’re offering me a freebie, sometimes they’re after a reciprocated link, but usually they just want me to plug some website or service that they can’t get sufficient publicity for. Sorry guys, I don’t do that. So today I thought I’d annoy my recent link-beggars by mentioning their projects but not linking to them. And I thought I’d warn future media desperados not to waste their time asking.

Some of the examples are risible, and show a total lack of understanding of the medium and the people who write in it. Take this one, for example:

Ken wondered whether I’d agree to link to his new content-lite London website for visitors on a tight budget. “Please feel free to mention it in your diamond or london geezer blog.” Er, no.

Asking something for nothing is never going to win you any friends, especially when you use the wrong language. “Feel free” is giving a false sense of choice, when actually it means “please please promote my site for nothing”. Hardly an attractive offer when there is nothing in it for them. Even when there is a quid pro quo, you have to frame it right:

Steve works for the marketing division of a major mobile phone company with a new phone to plug. He wondered whether, as a “thought-leader”, I might be interested in being “seeded” for a free trial. Cruelly I left him to search elsewhere.

If someone approached you in the street using this kind of language, would you pay any attention to them? Bloggers talk in English, not marketing-speak. Furthermore, you only need to spend five minutes reading diamond geezer to work out he isn’t the kind of person who endlessly talks about what mobile phone he uses. Here is an example of finding the right thing to talk about, only to then completely turn them off by not considering their needs:

Claudio wanted to offer me an advance behind-the-scenes tour of a major infrastructure development project somewhere on the outskirts of London. This special pre-visit was a very exciting prospect. And then Claudio asked me to email him my scanned passport details. And you know what, suddenly I lost interest.

Finally, as is clear if you read the whole of diamond geezer’s post, some bloggers are going to not want any involvement with your campaign, no matter what it is, and will make that clear on their site in an obvious place; respecting their wishes is the least anyone wanting to get involved will do. diamond geezer did the honourable thing of not naming any names, but other bloggers are not so reticent and will quite happily name and shame; not doing your homework could lead to the exact opposite of what you want to achieve.

Last week, Peter Kim of Forrester produced a report into the future of marketing and advertising. Its summary is a stark “change or die” warning to what internet and social media are doing to the industry:

Today’s agencies fail to help marketers engage with consumers, who, as a result, are becoming less brand-loyal and more trusting of each other. To turn the tide, marketers will move to the Connected Agency — one that shifts: from making messages to nurturing consumer connections; from delivering push to creating pull interactions; and from orchestrating campaigns to facilitating conversations. Over the next five years, traditional agencies will make this shift; they will start by connecting with consumer communities and will eventually become an integral part of them.

Over at Technobabble 2.0, Jonny sums up some of the best blog reaction to the report, as well as some of his own observations. I particularly liked this one, as it’s spot-on - more and more of our work is working more integrated manner with other agencies, crossing over and sharing ideas and personnel:

I believe that within a few years there will be less distinction between digital, advertising and pr agencies - we will in turn become influencer agencies that span multiple media.

On the dissenting side, Mark Earls dislikes the concept of communities that Kim puts out:

But a big fat “NO” to the idea that there are “fixed communities”: this reeks all too much of the network theory that geekworld likes; human social connections are much more interesting than that model - derived from the tech world - suggest.

However, I don’t think anyone’s claiming there are such things as “fixed” communities - we all occupy multiple communities and adopt multiple identities. We may be an expert or influencer in one community but a total newbie in another. Trying to conceptualise these is difficult in terms of classic network theory, in terms of mere transportation of information and ideas and treating people as mere transceivers, can only provide an incomplete picture; some of the more funky postmodern stuff like actor-network theory could well come in. The idea of network and actors being interchangeable, of transformations of messages and what ANT calls “struggle”, add an extra dimension and take into account the fact that being members of a network involves development and taking time. Whether you’re a brand or an individual, it is not just a case of plonking yourself in, sending a few messages and saying you’ve “created a conversation”, but hard work that may mean transforming yourself as well as others.

What do we need to do to get networks and brands working together, is summed up nicely with what Paul Isakson has to say here:

Instead of looking at what brands can tell people, we instead need to be looking at what brands can do for people. How are people really using the products or services of your client? What are they actually saying about them? (No, not what they say in focus groups. What they really say about them.) What do they wish they could do better? What could brands do to make peoples’ lives better/easier/happier/etc.?

We’ve been looking a lot at this lately, building up some insight research methodologies and a corpus of tools we can use to look at brand perceptions, and how better to relate to customers - how to turn a brand that talks at consumers into one that talks with them. It’s fun but hard work - despite the wealth of information out there, distilling it into useful, actionable insight isn’t easy, and in fact it’s one area where old-school disciplines can help new media and digital mature as a discipline.

Boing Boing, the world’s biggest blog according to Technorati, have a special section sponsored by Honda. On the face of it, it seems an ideal match-up - BoingBoing is a self-professed “directory of wonderful things”, and as a celebration of the bold, the quirky and the creative, it meshes well with Honda’s “power of dreams” brand message, and high-art fantastical advertising (latest example of which you can see here).

Still, at the same time, BoingBoing has decidedly indie creds, and the blog has taken a strong line criticising coprporations, governments and other organisations in the past for hypocrisy or damaging campaigns. No surprise then, that some regular readers felt uncomfortable, particularly when it came down to Honda’s sponsorship covering BoingBoing’s environmental section, as some of their commenters have noted:

WTF? Honda, fossil fuel burners par excellence sponsoring the environment? Just cause they build one car that is a bit less polluting, hardly makes it a green company. Global warming and oil wars anyone? What makes it green is ‘hip’ places like BB who are willing to peddle their propaganda.

Perhaps BB weren’t clear enough about what the sponsorship entailed - readers were worried that this may compromise their editorial independence or that BB were going to tailor content to Honda’s demands. Mark Frauenfelder, one of the contributors, set the record straight with this comment:

Honda gave Boing Boing no guidelines. Boing Boing’s editors have not corresponded with Honda about the campaign. Honda asked Boing Boing’s ad sales partner (Federated Media) to ask Boing Boing’s editors (Cory, David, Xeni, and me) to tag posts that fit the categories of “safety,” “innovation,” and “environment.”

But the fears pervade, as this poster summarised the issues it raises:

I have NO problem with BiongBoing making money. I saw the Honda ads earlier and I supported the attention that a new big name sponsor would garner. Egads, with all the work that they’ve done for the anti-DRM movement and for general nuttiness in general, I salute them. And, to an extent, I find that the explicit disclosure of the sponsored sections forthright. However, these sponsored sections, in my mind and IMHO, start to converge with the content I value. This troubles me.

One of the reasons why many blogs and other social media are so influential (and why we like working with them so much) is that they’re a credible source, but to many that credibility can come into question the moment they do anything with a commercial enterprise. In this case, it was nothing more than a simple sponsorship deal, and given BoingBoing runs ads already, there is no real compromise of their values or editorial stance. But they didn’t quite communicate this in the initial post, which has led to uncertainty and doubt. You can never please everyone, of course, but being as transparent as possible about these things is key to making sure your audience isn’t unnecessarily alienated.

This week’s recommended site is Interactive Art Director 08 - a nice new site from the students of Hyper Island Sweden. It combines both a nice concept and a slick-looking execution:

I like the 60s “public service announcement” style - it can be hard to do retro but this one gets it absolutely spot-on, especially the faded audio and the old-school voice narrating. Coupled with the quality of the animation and the variety in illustration methods - blending in contemporary items such as computers and mice pointers into the dated look & feel, and the result is a really nice way of promoting these students’ work.

Via Drew B, I’ve seen that Coca-Cola have embraced social media with a blog, called Coca-Cola Conversations. It’s interesting in some respects - getting an insider their historian/archivist (I didn’t even know such a job existed), Phil Mooney to talk about the brand and the business. Insider knowledge, presenting interesting new things and giving insights into what makes you tick are all hallmarks of good, open communication.

The focus of the blog is the company itself, and on history and collectibles. That’s good engaging some of Coca-Cola’s most passionate advocates. However, they could take it a step further, over time not just talking about themselves and their past, but other sites and things outside of the company that resonate with Coca-Cola’s brand values, with one look to their future as well. By communicating what you find new and interesting it makes that insight and engagement fresh and gives the reader a reason to keep coming back.