Web Strategy By Jeremiah Owyang - Latest Comments in Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess

Re: Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess

marianne oconnor — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 17:43:56 -0000

For those who checked out Cece's list when it was first posted, I'd like to suggest that you go back and take another look now that it's possible for the firms she mentions to go into the table and fill in the many blanks she had on her first go-round.

While I certainly agree that there are agencies out there that do not "walk the talk" as yet, now that her research errors have been fixed (and I'm sure more fixes are yet to come), the picture is not nearly as bleak as the one she painted.

Re: Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess

kawika — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 20:59:29 -0000

I think our employees at Sterling Communications are pretty akamai when it comes to Social Media for PR (though our website is getting a needed refresh Monday), but I have to say I am still impressed with the cobbler's kids at http://www.modernista.com. They're a marketing firm, not PR, but still ... the company's entire website is a tiny frame on top of whatever they have going on around the web. Facebook is their "about" page, Flickr illustrates their print ads, YouTube shows their TV ads, Delicious links to their web work, and so on. Wikipedia used to be their homepage. Talk about walking in someone else's shoes.

Re: Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess

Csalomonlee — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 10:43:09 -0000

I've created a public wiki where people can update/add listings about PR firms and their social media participation. It is at: http://prfirmssocialmedia.p.... Thanks!

Re: Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess

Csalomonlee — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:20:45 -0000

Thanks Jeremiah for adding your perspective to this topic. Based on the comments on your blog and mine, I plan to create a public wiki so agencies and the community can update the listings. As many have pointed out that individual contributions are just as important, I will include a column for individual Twitter IDs in addition to a corporate one.

Once that is completed, I will comment here with the link. Thanks again for the interesting discussion!

Re: Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess

Kevin — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 20:44:49 -0000

would you trust a firm that was doing it successfully for clients but didn't do it on their own? I get the R&D spin, but a lot of times we learn the tools in our personal space. (And not all of us let the 2 co-mingle.)

Re: Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess

Bert DuMars — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 19:13:44 -0000

Immersion is required to truly understand social media - its culture, power and potential. If you do not have a blog, how can you advise how to build and make one successful? If you (the agency) can speak from experience, your presentations will have more power and validity.

Re: Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess

Jennifer Leggio — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:38:39 -0000

Good analysis but it makes me nervous due to the rampant discussions led by social media tools. For me, I'd rather see agencies put their clients first and have their own branding come second. Just like agencies should not push "you must use socnets" on their clients, they shouldn't take the blanket approach themselves. That is just foolish business.

Re: Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess

Bryan Person — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:35:46 -0000

Jeremiah:

I know that as a buyer, I'd be skeptical of a vendor whose employees weren't at least somewhat engaged in the social channels themselves. That doesn't mean they need to be on every social network or even be power users, but showing some eating-their-own-dogfood experience would be a requirement in my book.

Bryan | @BryanPerson
LiveWorld

Re: Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess

Leslie Bradshaw — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:54:12 -0000

Jeremiah -- thanks for tipping me off to Cece's post.

Echoing many here on your blog and on Cece's, I am wondering how one could conceive of -- let alone execute -- a successful "social media strategy" without having actually ever done it personally. Authenticity matters in this field in ways that become immediately apparent -- either you are out there, or you are not.

On a personal note, my team and I over at New Media Strategies have built some of the most interesting and community-serving campaigns and, more importantly, conversations for clients because we are made up of real-deal diggers, Wikipedians, Twitters, bloggers (some Weblog nominees and credentialed political bloggers during the Election, at that), etc.

C-SPAN is one of many great examples of this that I love to plug when I get the chance: http://is.gd/k8tC

Thanks again,
Leslie (@Leslieann44)

PS: WOMMA is slated to host a webinar on 2/25 w/ Molly Flatt, 1000heads that seems to also be addressing this: "When it comes to Social Media, never have so many, talked so much, knowing so little."

Re: Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess

Boston PR firm — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:16:52 -0000

Practice makes perfect.

I think social media is a great area for PR firms to address, because it seems to be building serious momentum at the moment. It's just another avenue and tool PR firms can use to help bring exposure to their clients.

-Timothy

Re: Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess

Michael McWatters — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:10:10 -0000

For the most part, I agree, but the "cobbler's children" argument does carry some weight. A very successful, busy firm might actually be helping their clients, even if they are not doing it themselves. In these instances, it's important to ask the agency to demonstrate how they have helped others, even if they haven't helped themselves. Put another way, I trust a chef based on what he cooks in his restaurant, not for himself at home when he's alone.

Re: Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess

Paula Drum — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:04:13 -0000

Thanks for the article and the mention!

I definitely want to reiterate my feelings on agency partners also being practitioners. I personally subscribe to this philosophy. I have created a blog (that I don't write on very much because of competitive reasons), participate on Twitter, Myspace, Facebook and even frequented Second Life. I don't think anyone can appreciate these new communication channels if they are not active participants (from the company or agency side). It is very easy to either discard the medium or enter into it in a very inappropriate way.

I took a lot of heat when H&R Block entered Second Life, however, no one who was commenting had ever been in Second Life let alone to the H&R Block island to understand what we were doing. All of these communication channels are new and different in their own ways. When I work with an agency, I want to partner with a team that understands these environments. I can pay anyone to learn on my dime. I look for partners that add value, therefore they must be practitioners too.

However, I challenge not only the agencies that support organizations to be active participants, but, the people within the organizations as well. It is critical that both sides under the environments that they are playing in.

Re: Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess

doughaslam — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 12:13:09 -0000

Jeremiah,

thanks for bringing attention to this. I applaud Cece's effort, but would like to echo Mike's sentiment above that many agencies have individuals participating, and thus the list in that post is far from complete (I work at SHIFT Communications, and I don't think you would argue that we have no Twitter presence, for example).

But the premise? Spot on.

Re: Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess

Hutch Carpenter — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 11:10:41 -0000

Scott - I'm not in the PR/advertising industry. I work for an enterprise 2.0 vendor and use social media myself as part of my job.

If we ever had some PR agency offering social media strategy without demonstrating that they can use it themselves, I wouldn't listen to them.

If you don't practice social media, you really can't understand what makes it work. This isn't a creative coming up with a few discrete ad campaigns.

The human interaction and personal relevance orientation of social media makes it hard to stand outside it and offer advice. If you try, your advice on what to blog will be based on theories, not on what you've seen work. I can tell you that having blogged for a year now, I've developed a good sense for what engages people. I could not have done that without actually practicing. Same goes for Twitter or any other social media.

Any thought that "I don't have the time or talent to blog, Tweet, etc." means you're telling a client to do something you yourself cannot do. How can you offer solid advice in that scenario?

Re: Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess

Peter Buechler — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 10:37:00 -0000

New media are a significant and disruptive threat to traditional PR. When faced with loss of clients or at least share of wallet, it's very tempting for them to claim "we can do that" and try to sell a half-baked program.

There is an irony in that even if an agency does know something about social media, this is not the sort of campaign, which should be primarily out sourced. Otherwise the blog posts, Tweets, etc. become one-way and client looses the value of market feedback.

Re: Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess

jeremiah_owyang — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 10:25:57 -0000

Scott Bauman

I expect my Ad agency to absolutely be able to advertise themselves well, sure not an "addy" but eating one's dog food is an old phrase with roots from sensibility.

I'm standing my ground on this, social media vendors need to walk the talk.

Re: Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess

Scott Bauman — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 10:08:35 -0000

Jeremiah,

I take your point about not "practicing on clients" but I think of it a different way. My ad guy example is more appropriate. You'd never expect an ad agency to invest the time or expense to build an Addy-winning campaign for itself. You'd expect them to invest in people, technology and processes to ensure they're current and able to deliver the best creative and service to clients. So, I guess I'd say that you DO want your agency to be part of the conversation (so absolutely they should blog, Twitter, etc.), but I'd stop short at saying they should be practicing everything they do - in terms of programming - first before rolling out to clients.

Re: Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess

Gail Nelson — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:55:26 -0000

We provide services to thousands of PR agencies, and based on the response we get to our educational webinars and white papers on social media topics, I can attest that many agencies who aren't yet on board are likely to join in the conversations very soon. That said, I recently looked for some social media strategy help for BurrellesLuce and chose a PR practitioner who practiced what she preached.

Re: Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess

Ian Truscott — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:39:44 -0000

Hi Jeremiah,

Our PR agency (Ruder Finn, who are mentioned in the list) are driving our digital comms - doing a great job of helping us with a program of internal training and adoption of the social web.

Specifically: http://twitter.com/bmcmichael - has been excellent.

Ian

Re: Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess

Juliana — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:34:30 -0000

Thank you for your insights! Things are particularly difficult if you work with a traditional and conservative agency. We are trying to establish some projects for clients but the work should start at home, isn't it?

Regards!

Re: Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess

Matt — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:31:40 -0000

"...in a new media that’s radically different than communications of the past, agencies should be practicing so they can learn how to be better at applying this to their own clients."

i couldn't agree more. in the learning process, there are bound to be mistakes made. i'd rather make them while doing internal work instead of while doing client work. whether or not your internal culture allows you to make those mistakes is fodder for a series of blog posts.

at my agency, we're working hard to walk the talk when it comes to social media. i'll admit we still have a long way to go, but i am proud of the progress we've made.

@m_dunn

Re: Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess

Joe Ciarallo — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:18:58 -0000

Jeremiah,

This is a great post, and thanks for the list. I hear your frustration about releases that come with no links or other "social media content."

However, just how important is it for an agency to have a Facebook page? I'd much rather they have a great newsroom on their site with contact info that is easy to find. What do you think?

Joe

Re: Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess

Philip — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:18:13 -0000

I insisted our creative agency dump our 'coporate brochure' website a few months ago and start blogging. We haven't looked back. I believe a lot of ad agencies talk with great 'authority' about blogging, without really getting it.

Re: Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess

jeremiah_owyang — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:11:02 -0000

Scott Bauman

Sure, there are doctors that smoke who are excellent at patient care. There are bald hair stylists, and mechanics with broken cars.

But when it comes to trying new programs, shouldn't they be practicing new styles rather than practicing on clients?

Re: Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess

Juan Díaz Díaz — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:04:06 -0000

There are even PR companies that dont have a website with easy contact and url to their customers info. Or that not have pics for the distributed news (not mentioning multimedia stuff).
Blogging, social networking, tweeting, are still to new and with few share outside early birds, pioneers, geeks and the mass of common folks triying to date. That is not the corporate wannabe target.
Also, many PR co are afraid about not controling their presence or are not enough tech savy to use new ways to relate and communicate.
But the time is comming. New stuff is gaining uses everywhere and now that tradicional media is aon the fall new ways will arise.