Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

My dear ex-colleague Gerald Hensel has made some smart observations about lifestyle blogging having become such a normal part of brand activation strategies that its use has become somewhat, well, meh. While a few years ago, we would have pushed brands to embrace blogger-vetting of their lifestyle brands for credibility, it has become more and more a questionable practice at this point. Says Mr. Hensel

What was once a crazy and very different (very earned media) way to interact with this strange new world of social media has changed. Lifestyle bloggers have successfully become preferred members of the royal household of major car, fashion, and entertainment brands.

Mr Hensel cautions that this development is just a gradual improvement of our definition of paid media. And, for sure, the “paid media” part of this assessment seems like a correct assessment. After all, bloggers receive goods and services for their voice and reach.

However, I wonder if we should call this an improvement at all? If more and more earned media becomes just slightly improved paid media, we are, in some sense, back to square one, and people will unmask this development, and brands will once again risk their opportunity to create credible content experiences.

Hensel finishes his opinion piece by saying

We have a new class of bloggers. And this new class enjoys the industry’s growing interest in their services and knows what it has to ask for to stay happy.

True. And let’s just remember that these bloggers are where they are not because of the industry’s interest but because of people like you an me. And it is easier and quicker to squander this trust than you think. This fact isn’t helped by the tendency of Brand Management or Digital Marketing folks still inadvertently focusing on blog reach as main strategic metric instead of blog credibility or other grassroots soft metrics. So, when you do you blogger outreach, be sure of how well vetted your blogger outreach actually is with actual customers.

Read the whole thing here.

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You have to walk the walk, as the saying goes.  In other words, if you say you know social networking for your clients, then you better have the know-how to back it up.

So some agencies are realizing that the pitch for the digital business for Turkish Airlines is going to require them to do a little more than just checking their email to get the brief.  They need to be familiar with Flickr, Tumblr, Blogger, Twitter, Googledocs and more, or they can’t even get to the brief!

Read more here and here.

I think we can’t talk credibly as an agency about digital properties without spending the time using them as just that - typical users.  So yeah, I think you should have an account on Plurk, and Social Sooshi, and RunPee.  Even if you think they are crap.  Use them, see what the experience is, and you’ll be able to give real advice.

Kudos to the client for recognizing that the agency they’re looking for needs to walk the walk.

I wonder who advised them and set it up?

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