Underscore Representin'

Our crew at the Catalog For Giving benefit on Tuesday night.

Edelman Posts Next Steps

Richard Edelman posted some next steps for his agency over at his blog. It's good to let folks know what they plan to do. However, a couple of the points seem rather vague.

• We are undertaking a thorough audit around the world to ensure we apply best practice guidelines to every program in every market and specialty area.
• We are requiring that all employees attend an Edelman University class on ethics in social media, hosted by members of me2revolution team as well as external experts. This will take place before the end of next week
• We are establishing a 24/7 hotline so our me2revolution team can review, provide counsel and apply best practice guidelines on social media programs before their implementation. This ensures that programs adhere to the WOMMA guidelines or best-in-class standards around the world.
• We are creating ethics materials that will be distributed to each office and all new hires.

These are some good first steps, but I think he ought to share what Edelman believes to be "best practices" and "ethics guidelines" so that we can see for ourselves whether or not we can expect transgressions concerning transparency in the future. It would also be nice to see whether or not Edelman still plans to execute client communications programs top down.

Air America Filing Chapter 11?

The New York Post is reporting that Air America Radio has filed Chapter 11. I listen on XM all the time. In fact, I got XM in part because I was having difficulty picking up the terrestrial signal all the way out on Long Island. I hope it sticks around.

Another Change In Thinking To Ponder

While everybody is seemingly going ga-ga over the GooTube thing today, I've been thinking about something else. I've been pitching a lot of clients lately on the notion of adjusting their thinking from top-down (broadcast) to bottom-up (conversational). There's another wrinkle once you get past that, though.

Just like they tend to have problems with the notion of releasing their perceived control of the message, marketing folks tend to have problems with control of the venue. That is, marketers want things to happen on their own websites and not elsewhere on the Internet.

A conversation has less perceived value to many marketers if it transpires on Bob's Blog as opposed to the blog they set up for the purpose of hosting said conversations. For some reason, many marketers are having difficulty moving from aggregated to distributed in how they think about the marketplace.

Yes, we like it when client blogs become the focal point for a conversation. But that doesn't mean that a discussion on a message board or on an independent blog is less valuable in some way.

Maybe this has something to do with the idea that marketers crave control, and if they do come to terms with not being able to control the message, maybe they still can't come to terms with control of the venue.