The Best Part of a Blog is the Comments
May 15th, 2009 by Phil Johnson
Here’s a link to my most recent blog post on AdAge. It’s about some of the challenges that we as an agency discovered when we started implementing social media programs for our clients.
Maybe the best part of the post is the 40 or so comments from our peers in the advertising business. The responses really cover the gamut. You’ve got people pitching their services and others commenting on my intelligence, or lack thereof. A handful of people make my own points better than I could make them myself.
If you’d like the condensed version, below are a handful of comments that I thought were either thoughtful, or just plain entertaining.
From Josh McCormack, Allen, TX:
“We’re seeing a much deeper level of social networking than just a presence on Twitter and Facebook. Increasingly brands are deciding to incorporate conversations in the form of social networking on their sites. Blogs, forums, buddy lists, send to a friend, rating, commenting, sharing and user generated content. It’s truly a different model than most ad agencies are set up for. It’s not 90% design. It’s not built so that you never change it. It’s alive, and it’s a tough concept for a lot of people to sell, spec and deliver.”
Paul Ashby writes:
“It still amazes me that the people pontificating on the “New” media are, already, beginning to sound similar to those who pontificated on the “Old” media. None of you appear to address the root of the problem, which is a total lack of knowledge as to the meaning of the word “communication.”
From Langston Richardson, ECD at Infuz:
“I see the biggest shift will occur between two types of agencies: from what I call the “digital savvy” who will tout solutions based off heavy technology and interaction design and the “digital newbies” who come from the evaporating oceans of traditional media who are looking to push heavy story telling experiences online. Of course there are many who do a bit of both. Whatever a brand manager and their agencies agree on, the right strategies for engagement will tend to look less like the big over arching campaign and more of a sustained interaction between brands and consumers that enriches the experience of both.”
Christopher Payne-Taylor of Andover, MA writes:
“So, Homer Simpsons of the agency world, avoid hyperventillated whizbangisms like “adopt a new set of values” with social media. There are no new sets of values, just the ability to move what you’ve always done well into new and different neighborhoods. And hey, what do you do first when you move in, especially if you’re planning on stay there a while? Get to know the neighbors.”
Just like some footnotes are more entertaining than the main story, sometimes the comments and interactions on a blog are what make it interesting and social.
May 15th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Bob Greenberg of R/GA, writing in AdWeek, takes the discussion a step further with a very intriguing concept:
“There’s (a) trend happening that most media companies aren’t thinking about: the idea that marketers can ‘own’ media themselves. As marketers build sophisticated digital ecosystems encompassing Web, mobile, emerging platforms, digital signage and in-store technologies, they are gaining reach and frequency with audiences – the very hallmarks of media in the old model. When brands own their own media and aggregate their own audiences, they lessen their need to purchase these eyeballs elsewhere. We have seen this effect repeated again and again by brands that build long-term digital platforms rather than execute episodic campaigns online. These platforms often drive an even greater amount of ‘earned’ media whereby consumers share information about a brand via their blogs and social-network sites. In short, the same digital technology trends impacting newspapers have also lowered the entry barrier for brands that want to become their own media companies.”
Great article, Phil, and I like how you’ve extended the conversation to your blog while promoting it on Twitter. Hope all is well at PJA.
May 18th, 2009 at 9:59 am
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May 18th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
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