Marketing Technology

Interpublic’s MWW Group is the first of the large PR agencies to announce a blogging offer.

Jeremy Pepper is extremely dismissive of the whole thing, advising them to ”leave the blogosphere to the hipper, younger, more nimble boutiques, as we are less apt to screw it up”. Not sure I agree with either of those statements.

Tom Murphy provides a slightly more considered view, congratulating MWW for recognising the value of blogs and blog expertise.

But both commentators make some valid points, particularly questioning MWW’s credibility to advise on blogs when they don’t have one of their own, cannot name any of their employees that blog, and didn’t appear to target any PR blogs with the news. As Hugh says (paraphrased):

The smarter a market becomes, the better your product has to be and the more often you’re going to get the crap kicked out of you when you don’t practice what you preach.

Perhaps PR is finally getting smarter.

As I mentioned in my blogging community predictions for 2005:

And more agencies will tell clients they know all about blogs, when they don’t.

When it comes to what PR agencies offer clients in the blogging arena, it is definitely going to be a case of being best rather than being first, but hats off to MWW for having the balls to throw theirs into the ring.

PS. Tom – our “interactive” division is still around, celebrating our 10th anniversary this year. The main reason for this is exactly as you say – because PR is about communications. We have somehow managed to be the “ivory tower” and the internal awareness raiser. As a result, more of our practitioners have the basic knowledge needed to create programmes that work across both traditional and online channels.