Blogs Puzzle PR Firm

Tom Foremski of Silicon Valley Watcher extrapolates an admission by the head of Waggner Edstrom's UK office ("...regarding all this stuff about blogs, I just don't get it.") to "Microsoft's PR agency admits it doesn't 'get' blogs!"

Foremski goes on to note that a good blogger is worth far more (and costs far less) than any PR agency.

He doesn't get into the reasoning behind WaggEd's admission, but I think PR firms and marketing departments don't get blogs because they cannot control the blogosphere. All it takes is for a PR firm to think it has control over some bloggers, for other bloggers to expose what's happening. That's the nature of the beast, today.

(Kind of like the old media -- newspapers, tv, radio -- now being exposed when they goof up but try to hide it. The old adage, "Any coverage is good marketing," may no longer apply. Steven Gilmour calls it "behavioral transparency.")

We've seen in the CAD industry make several clumsy attempts to manipulate blogs or generate positive blog coverage over the last 18 months. Some blogs are written casually by users who may be a tad more wide-eyed ("Someone noticed me!") than is good for them, some by "everything is beautiful" CAD vendor employees, but others are maintained by media-savvy journalists (ahem!).

Those who don't understand the flattening effect of the Internet (and blogs) are condemned to be swept under the carpet. In this third millennium, WaggEd stands no taller than me or you. Understand this, or become irrelevant.

Comments

[Alex Neihaus]

Hi, Ralph. We agree completely and have responsed at some length here: http://www.agencynext.com/2006/09/06/pr-and-the-cad-market/