• Ketchum will launch a blog for its KPM practice
• Jeremy Pepper got an iPod mini for suggesting Ketchum to add a disclaimer to their website, KetchumIdeas.com.

What’s not new: a lot of unanswered questions, and some “copy-paste” responses.

More comments a little bit later.

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:

• Ketchum.com has posted on the homepage a link to a press release containing no specific URL for information on the new service; a URL was added a couple of days after the launch.
• KetchumPerspectives.com has no article whatsoever about the new practice.
• eKetchum.com’s news page features a press release from May 2002, announcing the new (back then) eKetchum’s website. No information about the new practice.
• KetchumIdeas.com is a website that has published, for the whole month of June, daily postings on topics like blogs, RSS, podcasting, mobile marketing and SEO — the domains handled by the new Personalized Media practice. Its launch wasn’t announced on Ketchum’s website (and I wasn’t able to find any press release about it). A couple of days after Neville Hobson “outed” the website and after criticism from some bloggers, Ketchum added a note to it, explaining that the website is a “service of Ketchum Midwest’s corporate practice” aiming to introduce “organizations to a month of insights about the growing roster of emerging media tools – from Web logs, or blogs, and podcasts to mobile marketing and Search Engine Optimization.” Later, Mr. Brown admonished bloggers for writing that the website was a poorly implemented weblog.

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.

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

June 23, 2005 @ 7:57 am

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}