Why let your ad agency write your blog?

Hugh McLeod has an excellent point (that blogs that aren't authentic will be skewered), but he should go further. Quick warning, if you haven't been to Hugh's site before he uses the "f-bomb" often in his cartoons.

Here's a quote from Hugh:

"The fact is, ad agencies hate blogs. They utterly despise them, even if they tell you otherwise. They hate them because if done well, they're cheap and they're easy. Frankly, they're in the business of selling you stuff that is neither."

My two cents? A good blog is written by an authority who is passionate about his/her topic.

How many ad agencies are passionate about your business? Not to mention an authority on it? (After all, if your ad agency were an authority on your business we'd just deal with your ad agency, not you). I'm an optimist, though, so I hold out hope that there might be a few, but they are few and far in between.

Now, you might argue that I'm not an authority on everything I write on. You'd be right. But, when I talk about something that I don't know much about I usually am doing so after consulting the world's experts (it's why I'm behind the camera on Channel 9, not in front of it).

So, yes, an ad agency could -- in theory -- do a good blog but it'd need to be done very carefully and probably from within the corporation being written about. For instance, if I were an ad agency being asked to do a CEO's blog, I'd make sure that the person picked to write the blog actually spent a few hours a week with the person that he/she were writing for (and have that person on IM). The thing is, why can't the CEO just write the blog him or herself instead of by an ad agency?

Get the answer to that question and you'll probably find a whole bunch of bones in someone's closet. Hint: do you really want that person representing you in public?

Even deeper question: why can't that company let an employee seven levels away from the CEO write the blog?

Hint: you're reading a blog by someone seven levels away from Bill Gates. By letting your entire organization blog you'll get closer to the customer which will bring a whole raft of benefits.

Yes, it still is a rarity in large-company corporate life to let someone so far away talk openly on a Saturday night without having any PR or legal people around to check out our words first.

Hint: weblogs aren't ads. They are conversation tools. They are tools to build relationships with other people (and organizations) in a scalable way. Why would we turn these over to advertising agencies?

Comments

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

Ghost-blogging?

That's really adhering to the "transparency. authenticity. passion" mantra.

I think a fictional character posing as a blogger might work for Ronald McDonald, the Chicken of the Sea Mermaid, the Pillsbury Doughboy, or the super-charismatic Arbies Oven Mitt (ugh).

But an adman who "writes a blog" for another person, especially a CEO--this sickens me. It's repulsive.

I could understand an ad agency, marketing expert, or literary genius writing a few sample blog posts, to exemplify what the CEO could do. But I'd want the CEO to re-write it in his or her own words at least, if not toss it and craft his or her own post.

I hope CEOs will find a few minutes a day to post something. The CEO could have assistants do research on a topic, pull together facts, then read this material and write a few paragraphs.

Lower ranking employees authoring blogs is good, but I really think the one who speaks most intimately, convincingly, and influentially for a corporate entity is the person who is in charge of it.

A few sentences every couple days from a CEO like Bill Gates would have a huge impact.

Ghost-blogging...please tell me this nightmare is not real. How can they do that to the blogosphere? Total bullocks.

[shel]

Robert,

I have to take partial issue with you here. I've known lots of ad people who are both passionate and authorative, I've known them to be extraordinarily creative and filled with integrity. But that doesn't stop the truth of Hugh's comments. Blogs are inexpensive and work best without disintermediation. Ad people and PR people really need to think through why what they are doing continues to get less effective. They need to figure out how they can join the conversation.

[Robert Scoble]

>I've known lots of ad people who are both passionate and authorative, I've known them to be extraordinarily creative and filled with integrity.

I'd like to meet them. The ones I've met are authoritative on creating advertising, but they aren't authoritative on our core business. If they were, they'd be working inside the business, right?

[Jozef Imrich]

Greetings Robert and Shel,

Thoughtful ideas and cartoons as always and a rather challenging commentariat ...

By the way, it sounds like the BBC is reading your blog ;-D

David Reid finds blogs are rocking the boat both East and West:

James Connell observes: "A lot of people are realising that a blog is a way to have a personal relationship with your audience without seeming too commercial.
"Even companies are doing it now. You have major corporations who make available an executive who has a good or personable writing style and he writes a blog about the company.
"Some of them are very frank and honest - and that is part of the strategy - and others are more limited."
Christophe Labédan says: Blogging is risky if you are a well known person.

[Jozef Imrich]

I just could not help myself so the urge to post follows at the risk of overloading you with data ;-D

Interview with Griff Wigley, blogging coach

The big question is whether blogs, short for weblogs, have the staying power to become more than just online diaries. Will bloggers upend the mainstream media? What legal protections should bloggers have? Is there a blogger business model? While no definitive answers exist just yet, experts at Wharton advise questioners to be patient. Blogging, they note, will be around for a long time.
• Blogs, Everyone? Weblogs Are Here to Stay, but Where Are They Headed? [via Trevor Cook ; original courtesy of Hidden Persuader. ]

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

Online diaries are doomed, I predict. If blogs are just online diaries, they serve no purpose beyond practice writing and catharsis, plus the dangers of stalking, predators, and identity theft.

Blogs were originally link logs. They followed a detour into digital journaling by bored, self-expressive youth, then got picked up by business and marketing, now CEOs.

Probably will head into full-blown web sites, with audio, video, photo galleries, etc.

...until the govuhmint comes along and regulates, first the political and journalist blogs, then everybody else. May have to have a license and pay a fee and tax to blog. Paranoid? No, just look at all other media: corrupted by the Powers That Be. Worthless. Dead.

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

P.S. The New Super Blogs, with movies you can view, will be on Internet 2.

The current blogs on the Commodity Internet will pass into archaic curiosities.

[Marc Snyder]

Shel wrote:

I've known lots of ad people who are both passionate and authorative, I've known them to be extraordinarily creative and filled with integrity.

Robert answered (and queried):

I'd like to meet them. The ones I've met are authoritative on creating advertising, but they aren't authoritative on our core business. If they were, they'd be working inside the business, right?

My two cents:

Robert,

I'm one. I've represented many different companies I was passionate about and about whose business I became an authority. That's on the PR, not advertising, side mind you.

I'll give you an example. I was working for a now-defunct PR agency that took care of a snowmobile manufacturer’s PR needs. At the time, I could entertain you on the finer points of every single mechanical, design and marketing detail for their products. I had used them in the past and (obviously) still did.

I had my own snowmobile that I renewed every year, staying on the cutting edge. I often went riding in my off-time with the client’s engineers working on future models and loved every minute of it. I have absolutely no doubt that I could be just as good a spokesperson for this company than the CEO and maybe even a little better :)

On the they'd be working inside the business part of your comment, the answer is not necessarily.

I had a number of reasons why I preferred to work for the agency rather than the company itself. (God knows they asked me often enough.) One of them was the pay and benefits. Another was the fact that although I loved that client, the agency had a number of other clients on whose business I gave a hand (thereby ensuring greater variety in my professional life). Last but not least, one of the things I like about agency life is that I get to participate in business development pitches (something I like and, if I say so myself, something I'm pretty good at. :)

MS

P.-S. Your comment/question isn't very nice for the good people at Waggener Edstrom :)

[Andy Havens]

There is always a wonderful continuum between "the passionate, utterly unintelligible, subject-matter genius" and "the brilliant writer who knows nothing about the subject." Somewhere between those two poles, there is plenty of room for lots of good content.

On the one hand, I like to read material written by people who are the real deal. The people doing the stuff, waging the war, eating the food, seeing the film, wearing the clothes, bearding the nun, etc. On the other hand, I like to read well written prose.

And here's something I started learning as a writing major in college, and have continued to come to grips with as a professional communications person; just because everyone can write, everyone seems to think they can write. They can't. And no matter how transparent, freeing, egalitarian and tranformative the web, blogging, wikis, peer-to-peer networks and the long tail end up being... some people just don't have the talent, haven't spent the time, and don't do the work necessary to be truly first rate communicators.

And other people dedicate entire companies to doing nothing but communications. We call them "ad agencies." Now, they sometimes get it wrong. They sometimes take a little while to catch on to new media. They often pitch a voice in a way that isn't always tuned perfectly to the ears of those who are completely in-the-know. But, eventually, a team of people who have spent their lives studying how to communicate will do a better job at communicating than people who haven't.

Blogs are great. I love 'em. I write two myself and guest blog at a third. I love disintermediating the press. In many instances reporters, advertisers and the media can get in the way. But in many other instances, they take a fractured, incomprehensible mish-mash of seemingly disconnected parts and turn it into a coherent story that people find useful.

There is a place for bloggers. There is a place for reporters and ad agencies. There is a place for agencies to help bloggers get better at blogging, and for bloggers to help agencies understand how to be more viscerally and directly in touch with their audiences.

Blogging is a tool that delivers written words. Ad men and women are pros at crafting words. The two will come together sooner than you think.

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

I like your attitude Andy. I once worked for Grey Advertising, Grey Direct, in NYC, but I mostly worked for direct marketing agencies, where your writing and stragegy were tested via quantity of responses from the recipients of the message.

I dislike most General Advertising because it rarely offers a Unique Selling Proposition, and often tries to promote products with dancing girls, balloons, music, "feel good" 15 second sitcom nonsense, with no compelling reason to buy, no strong benefit of product given.

[Tony May]

Hmm. Stong comments at the top about ad agencies. I would agree with you, but only to the extent that most ad agencies do not like blogs. This might sound painfully idealistic, but our firm exists to serve as our clients' advocate. That means (to us anyway) that we have to be passionate about the clients we work with. Some of our past clients - hasn't been the case. We were caught up in paying the bills, growing the business, etc. I got to a point that where we lost some business - not a ton, but enough to get my attention - and I realized I didn't really have a passion about most of them. It's difficult to be truly creative about something when...deep down...you don't care about the product. Things changed. We now have specific types of clients we take on. We have to want the product ourselves if we're going to work with the client. If not - no dice. If we take that approach, we're putting passion first, alongside of true client advocacy - resulting in a thrilled client.

Solution Ideas - if you're into surfing, get related clients. If you're into real estate, get related clients. You (we) will be more successful doing that. I know it sounds idealistic - but it is working for us and that's all I can go on.

[David Burn]

"The fact is, ad agencies hate blogs. They utterly despise them, even if they tell you otherwise. They hate them because if done well, they're cheap and they're easy. Frankly, they're in the business of selling you stuff that is neither."

Agencies mostly bill by the hour now. Take the number of hours a person like Hugh or The Scobelizer spend blogging and mulitply said figure by $150/hour. Then factor in the potential need for multiple voices on a corporate blog. I believe an agency could bill $1000 a day, give or take, for a truly effective, totally authentic blog that serves the client's needs. That's neither cheap, nor is it easy.

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

And what exactly does the ad agency do for the blog?

I mean, design it, provide some blogroll links maybe (approved by client who genuinely likes and reads or will start reading them), and maybe some sample blog posts to show how it could be done...

...then turn it over to a real blogging voice at the company.

Please don't tell me ad agencies are into "Ghost Blogging".

Please. That would be so inauthentic, contrived, and worthless.

Unless, of course, you attract Ghost Blog Visitors who eat ectoplasm.

[David Burn]

Vaspers the Grate,

Hello. Let's say the client in question is a golf equipment manufacturer. For sake of convenince, let's call them Ping. Ping's agency would write the blog entries, since writing is one of the things they do best. Yes, better than the client, who in this case is best at making golf clubs. The agency writers could explore all topics related to golf and particularly golf equipment. The agency might also recruit brand evangelists to contribute to the blog. These evangelists would be unpaid customers in my view, although I suppose they might someday be paid. I also can see where the agency would recruit bloggers from within the client organization, and then manage the entire thing. Does that work for you?

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

David Burn:

Now that we got our own little chat room going her on Robert's blog, thanks for explaining.

Still I have trouble understanding this scenario.

I'm not hostile to the ad agencies out there, I happen to love the advertising business in general, though I question lots of the strategy and those 15 second sitcom commercials with no USP.

But no, any golf club manufacturer who has to hire others to research the field and ghost blog in his name is a schmuck ass loser.

A CEO of a golf club manufacturing company, how does he know if a golf club is good or not? If he happens to know a lot about golf and golf clubs, then he knows enough to write his own blog posts.

If he is just a managerial type CEO who knows little about the product line, but is good at leading a company, then he needs to have the guy in his company who does know about golf and golf clubs, who tests them, who designs them, have that guy or gal be the blogger.

You see what I mean?

I've written material, had a CEO approve it, and sign his name to it, but that was in direct mail sales letters, where he knew the product and the audience, but was not expert in direct response writing techniques, headlines, postscripts, etc.

But a blog is supposed to be casual, candid, authentic, sincere, connecting and interacting with the target audience.

Does an ad agency guy also write the CEO's comments to the user comments? This gets absurd very quickly.

If Ghost Blogging is rampant in the blogosphere, it will destroy overall credibility.

Users won't know if the blogger is really the CEO, or someone who pretends to be him.

See my point? If you have a good counter argument, I'm listening.

[Jozef Imrich]

Hot off the press ... might be useful as a footnote on the pages of your blogging bible ;-D

Companies turn to new tools to foster dialog between employees, customers, and the public: Enterprise Collaboration with Blogs and Wikis - Infoworld

[David Burn]

I'm not interested in, nor advocating "Ghost Blogs."

I envision a cast of characters/contributors who are real people--some from the agency, some from the client and some from the customer base--using real names and writing real content about real stuff that matters.

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

David Burn:

Oh. Like Boing Boing?

Are you pulling my leg? I think you're a liar. You said:

"the agency writers could explore all topics related to golf and particularly golf equipment." thus implying, though oddly not explicitly stating (for a reason I think I detect, having been in advertising for years), ghost writing about these topics on behalf of the client.

This is advocating ghost-blogging, pure and simple.

A "team" yeah right. I know what that means:

Ad agency dictates what the client "should say", and the client, who's too stupid to blog, signs off on it.

Ghost blogs, proxy blogs, ad agency/client "team blogs"...it all boils down to crass inauthenticity, non-credibility, disingenuous crap.

If ad agencies are so good at writing ["one of the things they do best"], why does your commet above consist of one dense block of text?

Robert Scoble is right.

Ad agencies suck at blogs and managing blogs for clients.

[Scott Baradell]

I wouldn't have my ad agency do my blog unless I were a consumer products company. Otherwise, I'd go with my PR agency. In either case, it would only work if the agency were a full partner with the client in every sense, had an adequate level of industry/product knowledge and authority to express a point of view.

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

Ad agencies know little to nothing about one-on-one persuasion and interaction. If they did, the agency guys would be car salesmen.

Market research-dependent, they cannot deal with candid, sincere, spontaneous, authentic conversations with the messy, unpredictable psyches of individuals or online communities.

When did they ever even address offline communities based on shared interests? Only demographic groups, whom their research predicted would buy tomorrow what they bought yesterday and today.

A blog is like a phone conversation, one on one, with others joining in, fading in and out, cross-talking with one another.

Ad agencies speak to the masses during Super Bowl commercials (television spam), that cost a lot, but cannot easily be evaluated for sales impact.

Ad agencies cannot do or understand blogs.

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

P.S. "People want to talk to people, not flacks and lawyers and scripted marketing zombies with hidden and non-too-friendly subagendas."

--Christopher Locke (c0-author of THE CLUETRAIN MANIFESTO), GONZO MARKETING (2001), p.40.

[David Burn]

I hadn't checked back here in a while and now I see The Great Vaspers The Grate is calling me a liar and a poor writer. Oh my, I'm so upset. What shall I do?

I don't know who you are Mr. Grate, nor do I know what your problem is, but I can assure you I'm not advocating ghost blogging. Of course, you have no reason to believe me, since you have it all figured out already, and can even read my mind. Damn, you must be truly gifted.

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

Ya gotta admire a man who boxes like a perfect gentleman.

I'm taking the heat off you David and placing it on some others and some other issues.

I apologized to you at length over at BLOGthenticity on the "Anti-blogs and the Bloatosphere" post. Check it out.

I am violently opposed to allowing the fate that met other communication vehicles happen to the blogosphere, which is bloating and needs to go on a diet.

Look what happened to television (infomercials), telephone (telemarketing crap), postal mail (junk mail), electronic email (spam), music (MTV), all the horrifying distortions and pollutions, even malicious warpings.

I've worked in ad agencies. I've seen what goes on behind the cork board. I've seen yuppies try to scam fellow yuppies to sign onto stupid credit card procurement at inflated fine-print rates, etc.

Yet I've also seen good ad agency and in-house work, like Garden Way's Troy-Bilt direct mail, where faults and shortcomings of the product are loudly proclaimed. They were into community building and transparence decades before the bloggers started flapping their gums about these issues.

[机票]

http://labizio.blog.excite.it/comments/244507

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

huh. looks like possible COMMENT SPAM above this.

What asshat signs his name "??"

Go eat a mansion, commie.