What’s new in this interview:
What’s not new: a lot of unanswered questions, and some “copy-paste” responses.
More comments a little bit later.
Update (July 13): You can read Adam Brown’s comments here.
Boy oh boy, this Ketchum thing starts to look like neverending story.
PRWeek.com has a Q&A with Adam Brown, director of eKetchum, on the Ketchum’s recent launch of its Personalized Media practice and the PR bloggers’ criticism about it. (I’ll recommend you to read the entire article; in this posting I’ll quote just a couple of paragraphs.)
The article starts:
“Ketchum recently announced its Ketchum Personalized Media (KPM) practice, which focuses on blogs and the online communications environment.
But the announcement was met with criticism from PR bloggers, who noted the irony that an agency selling this service did not have a blog of its own. Adam Brown, director of eKetchum and global product manager of blogs and search engine optimization (SEO) for KPM, soon took to those blogs to address the criticism.”
“Soon”? Nine (9) freakin’ days passed between the first blog criticism of Ketchum’s way of handling the launch and Mr. Brown’s attempt to respond to critics. Nine days is a long time for responding even by the standards of mainstream media; in the blogosphere it’s an awful long time.
Mr. Brown says that many PR bloggers have welcomed Ketchum to the blogosphere. Really? The only PR blogger posting a neutral/positive entry about Ketchum’s new service was Steve Rubel. But here’s a page listing 22 posting from 17 different weblogs - and none of them is positive. Am I missing something?
Mr. Brown also says that he commented about the PKM brouhaha on my blog, “thenewPR.com“, and “on a couple of others“.
I revisited yesterday all the PR blogs that have posted comments about Ketchum’s launch of KPM, and I didn’t find any comment signed by Mr. Brown. Also, my blog’s URL is blog.basturea.com; thenewpr.com is my wiki. (The URL confusion has been corrected in the article.)
Mr Brown says that “we [Ketchum] made a decision when we launched KPM to not have a blog, but to utilize the other online outlets [we have in place] to communicate.”
Let’s see how effective was Ketchum in using its other online outlets to communicate the launching of KPM:
Let’s see: 4 websites, an incomplete press release, no information, no news since 2002, and a blog-like website not connected with the new practice, although it tries to exemplify it. It seems to me that Ketchum failed to utilize its online outlets to communicate the launch of the new service.
Mr. Brown thinks that the bloggers were critical because Ketchum didn’t have a blog. True. There are many ways that can be used by a firm to show its expertise in blogging. The fact that Ketchum doesn’t have any senior executive who’s blogging (like Edelman), doesn’t have a blogging community (like Hill & Knowlton) or success stories about launching blogs (like Hass MS&L, Voce Communications, or CooperKatz) made the absence of a corporate weblog even more conspicuous. In the absence of any proof of familiarity with blogging, you have to ask yourself on what, exactly, is based Ketchum’s claimed expertise in “personalized media”?
Mr. Brown shares the motives for not having a blog when Ketchum launched its new practice:
Q: Do you feel that overall PR firms need to have a blog to understand the environment?
A: I think that if they’re going to do a blog, they need to do it for the right reason. Right now, in the PR blogosphere, you’re seeing that a lot of bloggers - even prominent ones - are doing it for self-promotion. I don’t know if a blog is the appropriate place to do that. A blog is about a dialogue or conversation. Certainly, when you develop a blog, you can do whatever you want with it. But when you plan it, you don’t want to have to change horses mid-stream. We wanted to make sure we’re comfortable with our policy before we launched any kind of Ketchum blog initiative.
Say what?
So, first, Ketchum doesn’t want to launch a blog because it doesn’t want to use it for engaging in self-promotion? Right - that’s really credible coming from a PR firm. And how others’ use of blogging for self-promotion is preventing Ketchum to use it for “the right thing”, anyway?
Second, Ketchum doesn’t want a weblog because blogs are about dialogue and conversation. Translation: “we don’t want to/ don’t know how to/ are afraid of/ are not ready to engage in a dialogue“. So how in the world are you hoping to persuade your clients to pay you for advising them about entering the blogosphere?
Third, they didn’t figure out for themselves the ins and outs of this corporate blogging thing. Glad we cleared that up. (And I love the “don’t change horses mid-stream” bit; remember the President’s re-election campaign ad from “Wag the dog“?)
Reading the (e-mail?) interview, one might get the idea that the only criticism toward Ketchum’s launching of KPM was that it didn’t have a blog. But there’s more than that.
Ketchum failed to understand how to step in the blogosphere, although it’s selling its expertize in advising other on how to do it. It failed to put together a coherent plan and to implement it, although it had all the right elements for a successful launch. Ketchum launched quietly a website for demonstrating its expertize in weblogs, RSS, and podcasting, but failed to use it properly by ignoring each and every of the features that are making these tools valuable. Ketchum failed to understand bloggers’ expectations and to address them. It failed to respond swiftly to criticism. It failed to communicate in real time. When it decided to respond, it underminded its own credibility by failing to acknowledge any mistake, and by coming with “dog ate my homework“-type of excuses for the long silence.
It’s great that Mr. Brown is blogging since 2002; it’s great that his colleagues are blogging. But so far their understanding of weblogs and blog relations can’t be detected anywhere in Ketchum’s practice.
Mr. Brown is right: there’s no point in launching a blog just for the sake of having one. But Ketchum needed one as a symbolic gesture, as a way of saying “yeah, we’re taking the plunge, damn it!“, as a way of leaving Fort Business and entering the blogosphere’s all man’s land.
If you want to participate in conversations, it’s not enough to issue press releases and to comment, now and then, on someone’s blog. You need a “front porch“:
You don’t have to turn every reader in to a dyed in the wool customer, but you turn them in to some one who is willing to consider your company when they go to spend their hard earned money. You build loyalty, and you show that you do care about the feedback you get. Blogging is like sitting on your front porch and waving to your neighbors as they walk by. You don’t have to have a great dialog with each of them, but they will remember who you are and think of you when they need something, or be there to help out when they can.
I’m looking forward to welcome you in the neighborhood, Mr. Brown.
Hat tip: Keith O’Brien from PRWeek.com, for sending me the link to the article.
Adam Brown, director of eKetchum (commenting on my previous post on the launch of Ketchum’s Personalized Media service):
I’ve been reading the responses to Constantin’s post on the 18th and wanted to take this opportunity to respond. I apologize for my delay in responding, but I have been in the process of moving from Atlanta to Pittsburgh over the past weeks (something you can read about on my personal blog at www.GumpRants.com).
First, let me introduce myself. I’m Adam Brown and I am Director of eKetchum, Ketchum’s digital media development group. While I have been managing eKetchum for five years, I’m also taking the lead in managing several of Ketchum’s new Ketchum Personalized Media service offerings, including our blog services. The blogosphere is something that I have been passionate about since I started personally blogging in 2002, and it’s refreshing to see so many PR professionals embracing the medium. (If only we’d all in PR had this same passion about the Web seven or eight years ago - Web sites may have been very different today.)
Several of you have commented that Ketchum does not have an external blog - yet. That is true. Like most of you in our industry, the last thing we want to do is do a “blog for blogs sake.â€? Blogs are powerful two-way conversation tools. They’re one of the most powerful dialogue (rather than monologue) tools that I have seen in my eleven years in the Internet business. But they’re not appropriate for every type of communication or application.
What Ketchum has been doing is using our other online communication venues like www.Ketchum.com, www.KetchumPerspectives.com and a temporary, informational site for our Ketchum Chicago office at www.KetchumIdeas.com to speak directly to our important audiences. (Aside: Some folks in the blogosphere incorrectly assumed that KetchumIdeas.com was a blog, and on top of that a blog for the Ketchum Personalized Media group. It’s not a blog at all - there has to be dialogue to truly be a blog, and this site does not have any commenting features.)
Ketchum is currently using blogs internally for Ketchum account team and agency communication, most notably with our Media Strategy Group. And we’re working with several of our Ketchum clients on the development of blogs for both internal and external communication.
I look forward to conversing with all of you here in the PR blogosphere. It’s a very exciting time for our industry, and we have an amazing opportunity as PR professionals to take advantage of these new tools. But we must strive to use these new tools appropriately, effectively and ethically if we are all to succeed.
Thanks for your time,
Adam
Since Ketchum doesn’t have a blog (glad we cleared that :->), and Mr. Brown didn’t posted anything on this subject yet on his weblog, feel free to use my comments if you want to jump in the conversation.
{tag: Ketchum}
Poor Ketchum.
When it launched the Personalized Media service, Ketchum had some good ingredients for preparing a smooth entry in blogland: a (sort of) blog (and RSS feeds, by default), a podcast (well, almost), and a collaboration with a PR blogger. But it just didn’t managed to put all these elements together, which kinda sucks when you’re such a big PR firm, and didn’t managed to listen to those who talked about the launch and change what didn’t work, which definitely sucks in the blogosphere (no conversation = bad, bad, bad in my Cluetrain book).
I don’t think that blogs are something really new for the Ketchum guys. After all, they were planning to launch a corporate blog about three years ago, as recorded in the press release announcing the eKetchum website and dated May 31, 2002:
Over the coming weeks and months, additional features will be incorporated into the new eKetchum.com Web site. Soon, the site will include a group “Blog” where eKetchum team experts will share insight and commentary on a variety of subjects with the digital world. “We’ve been fortunate to assemble a team here at eKetchum of extremely bright, talented and insightful people. Blogs are the latest Web phenomenon, enabling anyone with a computer to become their own editorial page or niche publication. The eKetchum Blog will create awareness in our group and help position our team members as thought leaders on a variety of subjects,” says Adam Brown.
Well, the eKetchum blog didn’t happen. (Ditto for the thought leadership.) Probably it wasn’t meant to be.
But I would think that people involved in the Personalized Media service are, actually, reading weblogs, and that they learned something from it. So they were aware that the rule to live by when such a big elephant (read: Ketchum) enters the china shop (read: the blogosphere) is, simply, “walk the talk“.
That means, dear Ketchum, that if you want to advise clients about blogging, RSS, and podcasting, you should show that you know what you’re talking about. You can do that by having senior executives blogging for some time before trumpeting your blogging consultancy; that’s what Edelman’s Richard Edelman and Christopher Hannegan are doing. The same goes for Hill & Knowlton’s Joël Céré and Niall Cook. Or you could launch a blogging community first. You can let the results of your expertise speak for you before formally launching a blogging practice and a corporate blog; that’s what Hass MS&L did. But you can’t just issue a press release about it, and hope for a cheerful “Welcome to the blogosphere!!!“.
And if you publish a press release about your brand new service, why not include the URL, i.e. www.ketchum.com/personalizedmedia, for the page where those nasty bloggers can find more about it? No, it’s not enough that the service you just announced can be found in a drop-down menu on your website, or that the URL was (later? - I’m not sure) included in the press release posted on your website.
You knew that people will post furiously asking, “where’s the @$!#* blog?“, “where’s the @$!#* RSS feed“? Actually, bloggers were calm and polite, but the questions popped up, nonetheless. Why not showing them that, in fact, you do have a blog, or at least something that can become a blog? Why letting someone else to bring this news?
And if you have a weblog, what about adding a link to its RSS feed? Why not enable comments, so you can start to practice the “blogosphere relations” that you preach in your offer? Comments by e-mail? That’s what you think this is about?
It’s great that you have a downloadable show, but purists will tell you that it’s not a podcast yet, because the MP3 file is not delivered automatically via RSS. WordPress has support for podcasts; please use it, if you want to be on the same page with the cool guys.
The same goes for archives. The rollovers are really cute, but please add a good ol’ archive. It’s much more useful.
Also, I found in a press release (written in German) that your new practice -or at least its German side- will benefit for the collaboration with our esteemed colleague and PR blogger Klaus Eck, who’s blogging at www.pr-blogger.de. Wasn’t that worth mentioning also in the English press release? Wasn’t that newsworthy for our small, but active PR blogosphere? Where you afraid that you’ll get some credit for actually working with a blogger? Well, too bad.
Now, let’s see how your blog monitoring service is working. I’m a little bit concerned about it, because nobody from Ketchum bothered yet to leave a comment on the blogs that posted about your service. But look, you still have time until Monday to get aboard the Cluetrain and learn that building relationships with bloggers is done by having conversations with them, not by ignoring them.
Please let me finish with a quotation:
Understanding and embracing today’s online media can serve both as an early-warning system for buzz about an organization and a way for that organization to lead the conversation in a leadership role.
Well, almost. You’ve been early-warned lately. Now let’s see what’s up with that leadership role. (Hint: you can’t lead the conversation if you don’t participate.)
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