CooperKatz Public Relations VP Steve Rubel, writing on his weblog, Micro Persuasion, slams PR firm Delahaye for conducting a webinar designed to help PR professionals “deal with” weblogs which Delahaye calls “unfiltered channels of communication. According to Rubel, the seminar, entitled “Surviving Blogs: Monitoring and Analyzing Blogs to Protect and Direct Public Relations Strategy,” treats weblogs as an enemy versus a phenomenon to be embraced. Calling blog content “conversations” which should be joined rather than managed, Rubel says Delahaye is just trying to sell its monitoring services and points out those running the seminar don’t even have weblogs. Spending a bit of time on the Delahaye website brings back many strategic concepting session nightmares in which fancy marketing babble was developed instead of clear language to describe what a company does. Delahaye does media monitoring for clients. They should clearly state that on their website. This insanity exists in the ad agency world too. For years, agencies have used thousands of variations of “we’re not an ad agency” language to try to differentiate themselves from other agencies. It’s true the face of advertising is changing, as are the methods of commercial conversation, but if a company whose purpose is to create something for another company that is designed to be seen/heard/experienced/etc. by an individual with the purpose of getting that individual to buy something, they are an ad agency. And forget that “we’re building a brand” babble. No one builds a brand for fun. A brand is built so people will pay money for a piece of that brand.
