Microsoft's PR agency admits it doesn't "get" blogs!

Hey Tom

I recently wrote a piece about this and how certain PR firms don't get it, which is based off apodcast I listened to over the weekend from PAX.

Link to Article: http://www.duanebrown.ca/?p=359

Link to Podcast: http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2006/08/27/Show-190-The-PAX-Panel-one.aspx

You might find it an interesting listen.

Duane

Hi Tom:

Great insights, but what a sad commentary...I recently viewed a chart of the top PR firms who have a corporate blog and their corresponding technorati rankings. It should come as no big surprise that their rankings were rather anemic.

You might be interested in a post I authored entitled "Push vs. Pull Marketing" which can be viewed over at the N2growth Blog

Wow, amazing. Just a couple of days ago I used the phrase about CB (citizen band) radio on Scoble's blog. I was referring to the fact that in the early nineties when I was evangelising the internet, people would often say 'but isn't it just like CB radio' (i.e. popular, but it won't last). I didn't expect to see the phrase used in all seriousness a few days later. And by a PR flack at that. What goes around, comes around I guess.

Abrahams should be free to expouse his learned opinion (and I don't completely disagree with all of it), but more ironic is that at the guy who runs the global Microsoft business for WaggEd (Frank Shaw) has a good blog of his own called Glass House.

And, btw, if blogs are today's CB Radio, that just means that there will be an even more disintermediated communications platform that will take their place in the future. That is, CB Radio presaged the onset of blogs by a few decades.

Sean: Thanks for the additional dose of irony!

Mike: I've often said that the best way to judge the "new media" prowess of an agency is to look at who is blogging there. Because you cannot "get it" if you don't do it.

Cross posting here, too...

Tom,
Harsh words there, big guy! C'mon down to Glass House (http://glasshouse.waggeneredstrom.com) and see that we've been talking about blogs and the changing nature of communications on my blog since 2003 (earlier, but we lost a year in a move to a new blog platform). Or check out what we've had to say about blogging here on our website (http://www.waggeneredstrom.com/what_we_do/expertise/online_communications.asp) . Or maybe notice that we were a sponsor of gnomedex, or hosted blogging rooms at major trade shows. Heck, we're big believers in conversation. And, to paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, Robert Scoble is a friend of mine. He was a huge asset for Microsoft and its communications. Where's the threat there? Always happy to talk!

You write like a dead tree newspaper guy, why not write in hypertext and send your subscribers to the information they need.

I work with WaggEd all the time, they are certainly aware of my blog and the Google power it gives me.

Did you know Frank Shaw of WaggEd? He gets it.

Hey Abrahams, there is a little book out there that you might want to read. It is called Naked Conversations. It was written by some guy that had something to do with PR and blogs or something, and oh, he worked for a company that you have something to do with.

Frank, I've read your posts, and I know that you get it. You get it because you do it, and you are involved in it. Paul A. will get it too...eventually.

Hi Tom, This is a very interesting story and I have just written about this on my PR blog in the UK. See
http://elleeseymour.com/2006/09/01/more-pr-blogging-shockwaves/

Tom, thanks for commenting on my site. I love being part of the blogging community and Paul Abrahams doesn't know what he is missing out on.

Hi Tom, just wondering if you're aware that Sam Sethi of TechCrunch UK has done a copy-and-paste job on your post?

Tom,

Paul is challenging the prevailing online consensus and igniting debate. A former employee is challenging his former boss publicly to a duel.

As a former direct report of Paul's, you seem to have axe to grind, one firmly lodged between Paul's shoulder blades. Tell us more about your professional relationship with Paul and you'll gain credibility for your attack.

Or maybe it's just the antagonism of natural selection: Journalist Blogger vs PR Maven.

As it stands, it doesn't quite seem cricket the way you've gone about it. In addition to broadcasting Paul's courtesy phone call to you, is it true that anyone in PR -- and by extension the blogosphere --needs to be available 24/7/365? And I thought it was only Death that didn't take a holiday.

You reported nothing about WaggEd's strategic counsel to Microsoft, or its advice to MS on blogs or MSN Live Spaces.

Ironically, my opinion appears to have no place in your debate. I'm commenting on a blog as part of a "blog community" -- your readership. According to you, I cannot possibly "get it" since I'm not posting on my own blog. Do you not find your attitude a bit arrogant?

Perhaps you're right because "Comments" are rarely if ever cited in a blogosphere debate unless the commenter has a blog to link to.

Cheers.

Kevin: I think it was Paul that issued the challenge :-) When somebody calls me and tells me they don't get it, and that they have publicly published this fact in a leading PR trade publication, I see this as an opportunity to debate a common issue: those that understand the value of blogging and its importance, versus those that don't and think it will blow by. And I thank Paul for creating this opportunity for contunuing education on this subject.

Tom for the last week or so i have been monitoring applications of New Media in the UK.

There are lots and I have tagged them on my blog.

Its not a PR thing. Anyone can get it. So PR practice has to compete with citizen PR's.

Great competitors they are too.