Ketchum Drinks the Blog Kool Aid

Ketchum, one of the largest PR agencies in the world, today launched Ketchum Personalized Media. The service advises organizations on how, why and when to integrate blogs, podcasts, RSS, search marketing and mobile marketing into their overall communications strategy.

This is very similar to what we're doing with our Micro Persuasion practice at CooperKatz, yet it's broader. What's interesting is that they are staffing the service with a team of personal media specialists, rather than training their regular account teams on how to use these tools. This is what we're doing. The best blog programs will be driven not by specialists but by PR generalists who think PR, but have knowledge of the blog world. In ten years this will be as silly as having a special group set up to write press releases.

Comments

[Jeremy Pepper]

Why is it silly to have a separate group to write press releases? Every interview I have conducted comes back to the lack of writing skills, and if you are able to write, you have a leg up. Some people are better at media, some people are better at writing, and some (much fewer) people are generalists.

That's quite different than segmented pitching.

[Niall Cook]

I'm sort of on Jeremy's team.

With any innovation it is often important (even critical) to give a smaller group of people who really understand it the freedom to explore and develop the market, before integrating it back into the core business.

This is what the successful PR agencies did with the Internet back in the 90s. If they hadn't, they'd have never got the opportunity to integrate it back in.

I agree with Steve that you need to train regular account teams on how to use the tools, but that doesn't mean you can't also offer a specialist service to clients at the same time.

What I would like to see is Ketchum practicing what they're preaching though.

[anu]

Actually, in 10 years (or maybe next year) the best blog programs won't be run by PR generalists or specialists - they'll be initiated and maintained by people inside the company with a passion for whatever it is that they're doing.

[B.L. Ochman]

I think Ketchum really ought to drink the Koolaid. Their site has no blog, no RSS feed.
BL

[Cary]

Unlike some traditional bloggers, I truly applaud the use of blogs for business purposes. In a world where customers like myself have difficulty just reaching a real human being on the other end of the phone, I think business blogs provide a much needed personalized form of communication with customers. Interaction? With your customers? What a novel idea! I'm very happy to see it catching on : )

[Todd V.]

Clients will no doubt get a better experience if it comes from a dedicated team, but in the end, you may sell more of the service if you can get everybody (i.e., the generalists) behind it. So ideally (from the agency perspective at least), that's the way to do it.

But to do it right, you have to somehow work in a) ensuring consistent service levels and experiences, and b) training the generalists to both sell and implement the service. Just ask folks like Mike Spataro at WSW how hard it can be to get the generalists excited about--and selling--specialized (online/interactive) services to their clients. It can be a challenge.

One experiment we're trying is force feeding--think of that scene in "Clockwork Orange" with the eyes being kept open, but without all the violence...

We're getting our whole firm involved in the company blog. We've been doing this for a few weeks now--everyone is responsible for one post a week. We're a relatively senior team, which does make this a little easier, but it seems to be going well so far (feedback is welcome if anyone here actually reads the thing from time to time).

We've upped the quantity of posts (though not everyone's post gets published) while, through an editorial oversight process (mostly a go/no-go decision versus any real editing--which I think takes away from the authenticity of the blog), tried to maintain quality.

The idea is to get everyone thinking about blogging (and other technologies) on the PR process. Maybe this will help folks sell our version of the Micro Persuasion practice. Time will tell...

[Paul Chaney]

I agree with Jeremy. Why not use specialists? They understand the medium and are familiar with the lay of the land. Of course, the detriment is that they may not understand PR, but no matter, that's what the PR folks are for. Combining the talents of top-flight bloggers and PR people seems to be the optimum approach.

[John Furier]

I have to violently agree Steve. Blogs podcasting et al elevate the roll of traditional PR with clients.

It's about the future of consumption in a new Internet environment. It’s about content publishing, filters, and recommendations other forces that drive demand from the head to the tail – niches. Traditionally it has been a function of marketing and pr and now its being a driven by blogs, collaborative filtering, word of mouth and new network effects. Marketing and PR in the blog and podcasting world is about “Credibility”!

Marketing and pr needs to think about how to use their skills which have traditionally been mainstream media and mass market skill set…contacting a small number of journalists and translate that into an era where the number of people they want to influence is numbered in the thousands and millions and it’s a peer to peer influential market rather than a journalist to reader relationship.