May 08 - Picture this

I was recently asked to give a presentation to students studying professional writing for their degree at Melbourne University. The topic was copywriting for digital media.

I’ve held many roles in the advertising industry, but copywriting is where I started, and it’s still something I love to do.

Now, as any half decent copywriter will tell you, there’s a lot more to the job than simply writing copy. Ideas, concepts, problem solving; these are all part and parcel of the copywriters role.

So rather simply than focus on writing for my student talk, I developed a presentation using great examples of visual thinking. I wanted to show them there was more to advertising online than bloody banner ads.

My talk about copywriting ended up featuring lots of video, great use of emotion and humour, plenty of great writing and yet very few words. I suspect this was because the rapid growth of high speed broadband, use of Flash technology and the popularity of sites such as YouTube, have changed the web from a primarily text based medium.

Recently in the USA, Gary Schenk, CEO of image library Corbis, made a pronouncement that images will eventually supplant text in the online media.

Given that Schenk is head of an image library, his viewpoint is probably biased, which is why Jim Morris took him to task on his blog, Advertising for Peanuts.

“I find this both silly and scary,” wrote Jim, “a real hackle-raiser. Mr. Schenk articulates an across-the-board dismissal of language as some old school artifact or vestige of a bygone era.”

He went on to say, “It's one thing to point out the obvious, that the web is becoming and will continue to become more visually interesting. But it’s an entirely different thing to proclaim, as Mr. Schenk does, that imagery alone can send a powerful message.”

Like Jim Morris, I also think Schenk got a bit carried away. Images are important, there’s no denying that, but the power of language could never be replaced by a collection of pictures.

“The stock images and footage that Mr. Schenk hawks,” argues Morris, “regardless of how rich, compelling, provocative, beautiful, true or cool they may be, must always, by their nature, be relegated to the role of handmaiden to language.”

Morris closes his blog post with this insightful summation; “As visually oriented as advertising communication may become, it is only via language that it can be made to convey, not just some meaning, but the very specific meaning intended by the advertiser.”

The Dove campaign for real beauty is a great example of the kind of thinking that Jim Morris is talking about. The images used in the campaign would be little more than nice photos of women without the concept of ‘real beauty’ to give the images a context.

The agency behind the Dove campaign is Ogilvy. Which brings me to a great example of the power of words and language in advertising that I discovered on the blog Brentter - an old house ad for Ogilvy.

“It is definitely something that you don’t see too often these days, especially in long-form copy.” wrote Brent Terrazas from Brentter, “Pearls of wisdom from some of advertising’s best.”

The ad in question is definitely something of a rarity these days. It’s all copy, with not a single picture to be seen. If it ran in this magazine today, the headline would still prove hard to ignore; How to create that advertising that sells.

Over the course of a whopping 1,909 words the ad goes through a selections of ways to improve the effectiveness of your advertising, all of them, of course, used and recommended by Ogilvy.

Here’s one gem that I think is worth considering, given Gary Schenk’s comment on the death of copy; “Story appeal. The more of it you inject into your visual, the more people will look at your advertisement.”

Even though the Ogilvy ad recognises the importance of the visual, it doesn’t do it at the expense of copy, proudly declaring, “People read copy.”

What the writer, yes writer, of the Ogilvy ad recognises though, is the one thing that Gary Schenk has overlooked in his simplistic argument – the power of the idea.

“Unless your advertising is built on a big idea it will pass like a ship in the night. It takes a big idea to jolt the consumer out of indifference. To get noticed.”

The ad goes on to say, “ Big ideas are usually simple ideas. But big simple ideas are not easy to come by. They require genius and midnight oil.”

Libraries and bookshops are filled with evidence of this genius. Somehow I don’t think they, or the internet, are going to be replaced with a collection of stock photography any time soon.

STOP BY AND VISIT:

Advertising for Peanuts

Brenttner

April 08 - Death of the agency?

A couple of weeks ago I attended a presentation from a company that specialised in content. Yes content. Now I don’t know about you, but if there’s one buzzword I’d like to put a stop to, it’s content. It’s such a nothing kind of word.

You never hear TV channels advertising their new and upcoming shows as content. They talk about programmes, premieres or must watch, anything to get you excited about their offering. Excitement, I think, is what’s missing when people use terms like content.

Suffice to say, there was plenty of excitement in the presentation I was at. The so called content was actually pretty interesting, way more so than the term content would have you believe.

I had a bit of spare time when I got back to the office, so I decided to see what the blogosphere had to say about content. My first port of call was The Kaiser Edition, where Marcus Brown and his cohorts had recently set people talking with a provocative post entitled “Content will kill your agency.”

“I sense an argument brewing,” wrote Marcus, “but that’s ok. We can have an argument and chew things over. No one gets hurt. I’ve been thinking about this for a while.” His basic idea is that the current agency model and the work that they do, is doomed. Unless, he says, “Your agency starts creating content.”

To tell you the truth I was taken aback by what Marcus had to say. Which took me by surprise to be honest, given I’ve been banging on for years about how agencies need to start doing more than just making ads.

Now correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t a 30 second TV ad actually a piece of content? If it is, and I believe it is, then what is this mythical agency killing content that Marcus is talking about?

“The kind of content that will kill your agency,” says Marcus, “happens without a brief - nobody has told you or the so called business development people in your agency that they would like to have a specific piece of content.”

Sounds a bit like marketing anarchy to me. A bunch of people dreaming up stuff with no strategy or direction, which they then on-sell to a client. And if the client doesn’t like it, they simply take it elsewhere and try their luck all over again.

The more I thought about it, the more Marcus’ theory had me scratching my head. Then he went and turned the whole argument upside down with this;

“Every agency, regardless of size, is capable of producing content that would challenge anything that is currently on the market; whether that be film, television, literature, online, radio, games or events.”

No argument from me there, but how many marketing people are actually looking for their agency to bring them ideas for TV shows, a computer game or some other non-measurable event?

German blogger Sebastian Oehme left an insightful comment on Marcus’ post. In it he points the finger not at agencies, but marketers. “They are afraid of risks,” he says, “and only trust the safe ways given by market research.” He doesn’t stop there;

“Most brands have nothing to say anymore and don’t invent products that are loved by people. They care only about money, market share and growth. They call their customers a target group, not people.”

After reading Sebastian’s comment I clicked on a link to another content related post by Marcus. In it he clarified his position on content. “It will kill your agency because nobody is telling you what to do and you won’t have a mandate to do it.”

Seems like Marcus and I kind of agree. If marketing execs are not looking for their agency to develop and present non-advertising ideas to them, how does an agency get their client to support, fund and create them?

“You will have to work it all out for yourselves,” says Marcus. “You will have to fight harder for it, harder than you fight for stuff now. It will kill your agency because it’s not advertising, at least not as we know it today.”

Respected Sydney blogger, Gavin Heaton, has also weighed into the content debate. I’ll leave you with his thoughts;

“We have all become too focused on delivering to briefs at the expense of true innovation. The art of advertising is dying in our hands, and along with it, the business models around which agencies have flourished.

Content creation is the last bastion of creative resilience that is left to us. Everything else we have conceded to the accountants, consultants and digital folks hungry for growth and glamour. Now give me a drink, I am toasting the rising sea.”

STOP BY AND VISIT

The Kaiser Edition

Sebastian Oehme

Gavin Heaton

March 08 - Agency Blogs

One of the great things about being a consultant, is that your opinion is your own, and you’re free to express it as and when you see fit. This is especially true when it comes to blogging.

Recently I took up an irresistible offer of to join the team at Wunderman in Melbourne. Even though the job in question was a terrific opportunity for me, I had to think long and hard about the offer before making a decision.

And what do you think it was that was holding me back?

Believe it or not it was my blog. Well actually my ability to freely express my opinion on the blog to be precise. Luckily Wunderman are keen for me to continue ranting and rambling on my own little slice of the internet.

Not only that, they were also keen for me to help them get a corporate blog off the ground. Which is what I’ve been working on for the last few days.

As part of my research for the Wunderman blog I spent time searching, reading and commenting on a variety of advertising agency blogs. As you can imagine, my learning from other agency blogs has informed our fledgling blog, which will be launching shortly.

To be honest with you, there really aren’t that many agency blogs out there in the blogosphere. And those that are often come with the caveat that the opinions expressed on the blog are the opinions of the writer or contributor, not the agency.

What a cop out! In the age of social media, agencies have to be brave enough to join the conversation, regardless of whether the talk is good, bad or indifferent. Having said that, there are some good agency blogs that are well worth adding to your RSS feed. Here are a few of my favourites:

Fruits of the imagination is the blog of Leo Burnett in Toronto. I’m recommending this blog based on reputation rather than current posts. Why? Because the driving force behind it, strategy planner Jason Oke, left the agency at the end of the year.

Postings have become less frequent since Oke’s departure, however at the start of the year they posted their mission for the blog in 2008. I’m hoping that this was written by someone with their tongue wedged firmly in their cheek.

“This is my promise to post more than it is an actual post. For 2008 it's about easing into things slowly. We will continue to monitor and contribute to some of the major industry and cultural debates including MySpace vs Facebook and bottled vs tap water.”

Love is a blog that I love from a Manchester agency called Love. In fact, you could say the Love blog is everything an agency blog should be. It’s fun, friendly, and the personality of the agency and its people comes shining through in every post.

My favourite was when they shared news of their lack of success in a pitch. Here’s what they had to say;

“Our digital geniuses put together a brilliant pitch to re-design the Crown paint website and overhaul their general digital strategy. It was one of those pitches that couldn’t have gone better on the day. It was also really enjoyable to present.

We were really proud of the work and the Crown clients seemed impressed with our understanding of their brand and the issues it faces. But sadly, after waiting nervously for a couple of weeks for the result, we found out we lost out to Code. Shame.

Well done to Code, who consolidated their relationship with Crown after doing various projects with them. We’d like to think we pushed you all the way and look forward to taking you on in a few more ‘head-to-heads’ next year.”

Strawberry Frog are one of the hottest agencies in the world at the moment. Their blog is always worth a look. They recently posted an interview with their new MD, Mike Lanzi. I think it gives a great insight into what makes them tick.

“The place is doing pretty darn well. The question is how do we take it to the next level, especially when clients are going to ask themselves more than ever whether their agency is really worth all the cost and bureaucracy.

The key is strategic and creative brilliance. We are investing in the best strategic thinkers in the business, and will build the agency by attracting the best seasoned talent in this space.”

Seasoned talent! Now that’s not a term you hear much in adland these days. How refreshing to hear it used by an up and coming agency, that’s made a name for itself by doing things differently.

And doing things differently is, I feel, what sets a good agency blog apart from your traditional toothless corporate web presence.

STOP BY AND VISIT

Fruits of the imagination

Love

Strawberry Frog

Feb 08 - Transmedia

Just before Christmas I was involved in an inter-disciplinary creative workshop for one of my clients. Over the course of two days we transformed an idea that had been developed for television into a veritable smorgasbord of concepts for all manner of media channels.

What excited me most about many of the ideas that came out of the workshop, was that they required interaction and involvement from segments of the target market. In essence, the passionate consumer as brand advocate was a key element of the campaign.

Another interesting feature of our campaign was that many of the elements were for the creation of interest in the campaign itself, rather than the product. As such we would have multiple storylines existing independent of each other, with influential target groups filling in the gaps.

The idea of a storyline unfolding across several platforms is obviously nothing new, in fact it was discussed at length last year in a blog post called Transmedia Planning by Faris Yakob from the London office of Naked.

In his post Faris acknowledges the book Convergence Culture, by Henry Jenkins from (MIT) Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as “Required reading for anyone with an interest with how the relationship between consumers and media is changing.”

“Transmedia storytelling,” says Jenkins, “drives the formation of knowledge communities - communities that share information – and triggers word of mouth.”

Faris has taken the thinking behind Jenkins’ idea and applied it to advertising. “Transmedia planning would be an evolving non-linear brand narrative,” he writes, “where different channels could be used to communicate self-contained elements of the brand narrative.

According to Faris, these elements, “Would build to create a larger brand world, where consumers pull different parts of the story together themselves. The beauty of this is that it is designed to generate brand communities, as consumers come together to share elements of the narrative. It has a word of mouth driver built in.”

When I first read about Faris’s idea of transmedia planning I brushed it aside as just a variation on the well worn path of media neutral planning. When I read his blog post however, I saw it was much richer in potential than that.

In a media neutral plan, the ‘idea’ is always at the centre. Much like our pre-Christmas workshop, where we took an idea that had been developed for television and executed it across a variety of other media.

Transmedia planning has brand communities at its heart, with different media platforms delivering parts of the story to members of different communities, who then share this information with each other through word-of-mouth.

To say that the idea of transmedia planning has generated interest in the blogosphere is something of an understatement. At the time of writing, I did a Google search for the term which returned over 200,000 results. And yet the term didn’t exist until Faris coined it.

Of course for every new believer like me, there’s sure to be a skeptic too. In this case it was Giles Rhys Jones from Ogilvy London. Writing on his blog Interactive Marketing Trends, Rhys Jones penned one of the headlines of the year – Transmedia Planning My Arse.

“Ok, so what is the score with all the hype surrounding transmedia planning?” asked Rhys Jones. “Isn't that 360 planning: a brand idea at the centre delivered across multiple channels.” He offers the Dove ‘campaign for real beauty’ as a good example of this.

“Each element plays an important and complimentary part but each also exists in its own right, stimulating thought and conversation from your collective brand audience.”

Obviously Faris and Giles, who are both highly respected advertising thinkers, are agreeing to disagree, with both of them seemingly talking about pretty much the same thing only with a different name.

“Transmedia planning is surely a case of the emperors new clothes,” argues Giles Rhys Jones. “The 360 model ain’t broke, just they way that people have been deploying it.”

Commenting on Rhys Jones post, J. Caddell offers up the following; “Reminds me when ‘Integrated Marketing’ was the buzz word two years ago. The idea isn't new, it's just another assault on the traditional marketing model that those with the budgets and most to risk clutch to with false security.”

He then sums up his comment with a touch of provocation. “Change will happen once the old model (i.e.: Ogilvy on Advertising) is officially declared dead. Until then keep up the good fight.”

It seems to me that Caddell may well have unearthed the reason why Faris’s transmedia planning idea has generated such debate on advertising and marketing blogs – it’s a new way of doing things. Something the advertising industry supposedly thrives on and yet is so often slow to embrace.

Much like its belated acceptance of the importance of digital media as a communications channel which, not coincidently, also lies at the very heart of transmedia planning.

Stop by and visit:

Faris Yakob

Giles Rhys Jones

Transmedia Squidoo

December 07 - BAM!

Two of my favourite places in the world are Piccadilly Circus in London and the teen haven Shibuya, in Tokyo. These are two of the busiest spots in two of the world’s greatest cities. What makes them so exciting is, without a doubt, advertising.

Piccadilly Circus is ablaze with neon lights and illuminated billboards. It is also home to what is probably the most famous Coca Cola signage on Earth. Shibuya is mass of giant video screens, flashing lights and a massive pedestrian crossing that has become a Japanese landmark.

Now whilst I love these advertising nirvanas, I think it’s time we as advertisers and marketers took a moment to consider our contribution to the daily advertising overload. Ads are quite literally everywhere these days, with each and every ad shouting and fighting for just a split second of our time.

Matt Creamer, from Advertising Age in the US, recently posted a piece on the magazine’s blog about Ad-Air, a new company specialising in ads near runways in airfields. “As if the airline experience wasn’t already rock-bottom,” wrote Creamer, “let’s shove a few more few ads in your face.“

“If your advertising is a nuisance,” argues Creamer, “customers and prospects will try to block you technologically, mentally or physically. More importantly, they’ll begin to turn away, or worse, they’ll dislike you. To complicate matters, bringing advertising to public, outdoor spaces raises citizen sensitivity.”

I tend to agree with Creamer, as do most consumers according to a recent study by Max Kalehoff and Pete Blackshaw from Nielsen BuzzMetrics. They undertook a web based data mining exercise to find the words most commonly associated with the term ‘advertising’ on blogs, forums and other places where people talk online.

The results of Kalehoff and Blackshaw’s study were anything but flattering. To help express their findings, they created what they have called a Brand Association Map (BAM), an onion like diagram, with advertising at its heart.


The words most associated with advertising were; misleading, false, revenue, dollars, marketers, ads and commercials. Hmmm!?

Other words to be found in the advertising BAM included deceptive, bombarded, spam, soliciting, target, banner, sponsors and advertisers. The word I’d most like to have seen, consumer, was in the outer ring of the BAM. Sure it was there, but only just.

“The terms false, deceptive and misleading,” explained Blackshaw, “all highly associated with conversation related to advertising - are quite instructive. They appear to reflect skepticism around advertising.”

I’d recommend that any marketer reading this column take a look at the BAM data and perhaps reconsider where and how they spend their advertising budget.

As you can imagine, Kalehoff and Blackshaw’s BAM found its way on to dozens of advertising and marketing blogs, where it generated a great deal of conversation and comment. I came across it on the Leo Burnett Toronto blog, where it had been uploaded by strategy planner Jason Oke.

Fredik Sarnblad, a senior executive at Y&R Brands in Singapore, was one of the first to comment on Oke’s post. “Where are the positive associations?” wrote Sarnblad. “Are we really this bad as an industry, that people don't associate advertising with anything entertaining or interesting?”

He went on to say, “I think most people at some level feel good advertising works. And this is one of the reasons why people are so skeptical towards it. Another, perhaps, would be the annoying interruption a lot of advertising contributes to in our daily lives.”

Pete Blackshaw then went and turned all the BAM discussion on its head with his comments on the Adverganza blog. “The interesting question,” wrote Blackshaw, “I think, is how much of the negativity actually comes from industry insiders.”

Given the sheer number of advertising and marketing blogs, this is a definitely a valid statement. A wise man once told me that advertising is a business of opinions. And most advertising folks who read or write blogs are not shy in coming forward with their opinion.

Having said that though, advertising people probably make up a very small percentage of the online community. However I’m sure I’m not the only adman who lives and breathes the advertising business and yet fast-forwards or avoids ads at any given opportunity.

Stop by and visit:

Pete Blackshaw

Max Kalehoff

Leo Burnett Toronto

November 07 - What a waster

A couple of months ago I received an email inviting me to join Facebook, from one of the people working on a marketing book for which I had contributed a chapter.

Given I already had more than enough blogs and RSS feeds to read every day, as well as work and personal email to keep on top of, I decided to give the Facebook invite a miss.

It was a pretty easy decision to make to be honest, as it seemed to me to be little more than a slightly less garish version of MySpace.

In fact, I never really gave Facebook another thought until a few weeks ago, when I came across a news story claiming the site could be costing Australian businesses around $5billion a year.

The story originated from a report by internet filtering company, SurfControl. They had calculated that if an employee was to spend an hour a day on Facebook, it would add up to a cost to company of over $6000 a year!

"Our analysis shows that Facebook is the new, and costly, time-waster,” said SurfControl spokesman Richard Cullen. Who also claimed, "There are Facebook groups dedicated to slacking off at work."

So damning and, I believe, ill considered was the $5billion a year claim, I decided to sign up for Facebook and see for myself this evil time wasting menace.

It didn’t take me very long before I realised that I was now in possession of a valuable and extremely useful social networking tool.

Apparently many large business organisations don’t see any value at all in Facebook and have banned their employees from using it during working hours.

In a post for the Marketing Profs blog, Gavin Heaton wrote, “Employers may well be concerned that Facebook could chew up a significant portion of their employee's days, but it is clear that prohibiting access is not the answer.

Just as there are expectations on employee behavior and approaches to engaging and working with customers, so too should there be policies about ‘acceptable use’ for social networking sites.”

According to Heaton, Facebook and social networks are the closest thing that many organisations may have to an ‘Expert Network’.

“Somewhere out there, probably only a couple of connections away,” says Heaton, “your employee will have access to someone of great influence. They may be a great thinker, designer or writer. They may be creative or analytical.”

In my case, this observation turned out to be spot on. I needed to find a copywriter for a project, so I wrote a short post on my Facebook. I got three suggestions, all of them from people whose professional opinion I value very highly.

Writes Heaton, “Sites like Facebook provide a neat way of segmenting and activating communities of interest through their group functions. And while not perfect, they work.”

Business strategy consultant Ross Dawson is another who believes that business should encourage, not ban, the use of social marketing sites in the workplace.

Writing on his blog Trends in Living Networks, Dawson argues, “Being able to reach out to the right person for expertise and knowledge is one of the primary values of any knowledge-based worker.”

He cites respected names such as Deloitte, IBM and Procter & Gamble as examples of forward thinking companies that have actively encouraged their staff to use networking sites.

Deloitte Australia, according to Dawson, “Actively uses Facebook inside its organisation, encouraging its staff to use the application to connect and keep in touch. It’s likely that Deloitte’s business performance would decrease rather than increase if it suddenly blocked Facebook.”

“Research at institutions such as Harvard and MIT,” says Dawson, “has consistently shown that employees’ personal networks are in many cases the single biggest factor impacting their productivity and ability to contribute to the company.”

Matt Moore, writing on the blog Engineers Without Fears, took a more light hearted look at the $5billion problem, predicting that “Coffee will cost Australian businesses $20 billion.”

“If 3.2 million Australian workers,” argued Moore, “spend around an hour a day drinking coffee with each other (about the same amount of time employees are supposedly wasting on Facebook) then that means that coffee is four times as damaging to the Australian economy as Facebook.”

Commenting on a blog post about the great $5billion scandal, Paul Donnelly wrote, “Oh my god you’ve opened my eyes. I’d better sign out of Facebook now before the UK economy starts to follow that of Australia!

Or maybe, I’ll ignore the scaremongering and spend the time I would have spent making the next cup of tea seeing what my Facebook friends are up to.”

Summing up the whole time wasting argument beautifully, Donnelly goes on to say, “There’s lots of offices where people drink tea all day, but you don’t see their employers taking the Kettle away, do you?”

Stop by and visit:

Marketing Profs

Trends in Living Networks

Engineers Without Fears

October 07 - Blogger Bashing

Last year I pitched an idea for a retail trends e-newsletter to one of my clients. As part of the presentation I presented a mock-up, featuring four trend related stories.

The client loved the idea and it has proven very successful for them. The reason I’m mentioning it here, is because they asked me where I sourced the stories from.

I explained that I had discovered them while researching material for my blog. “So what do you put in your blog?” asked my client. “Isn’t a blog just an online diary?”

Sadly, this is a pretty common misconception. Even the Webster’s dictionary defines blogging as, “An online diary; a personal chronological log of thoughts published on a Web page.”

Dina Mehta is a research consultant, based in Mumbai, India, whose clients include the likes of Johnson & Johnson, Nokia, MTV and ad agency J Walter Thompson. Dina is also a blogger. Here is how she describes blogging:

“Most non-bloggers seem to refer to blogging as merely writing a diary. But that's not complete, nor does it do blogging any justice. Blogging is the act of publishing content online - in a space that is yours.”

Of course the quality and importance of the content many people are publishing varies dramatically. But the best bloggers are increasingly seen as reputable sources for news and opinion.

Pick up a copy of US advertising trade mag Ad Age and you’ll see that they publish a regular list of the top advertising and marketing blogs. The fact that they call this list the Power 150 speaks volumes I think.

Sadly some journalists in the Australian print media continue to look down their noses at blogging. A good, or should that be bad, case in point being a recent article by Fairfax journo Graeme Philipson.

“I don’t blog,” wrote Philipson. “Can’t see the point, when I write this column and others. I also rarely read them - the letters page of this newspaper and the many emails I receive is for me more than enough exposure to the unfiltered opinion of the common man.”

Luckily not everyone shares the blinkered opinions of Graeme Philipson. In fact the unfiltered opinion, as Philipson calls it, of over 100 bloggers recently lead to a best selling marketing book.

The book in question, The Age of Conversation, is packed with insights and advice on how brands can engage and converse with their customers. It has received positive coverage from the likes of Ad Age, Business Week, Media Post and Fast Company.

The Age of Conversation was the brainchild of two highly respected marketers and bloggers, Gavin Heaton in Sydney and Drew McLennan from Iowa, USA.

Using little more than the power on the internet to bring like minded people together, Drew and Gavin managed to solicit contributions from 103 bloggers for their book. As if that wasn’t enough, they also arranged for profits from the sale of the book to a childrens’ charity.

In his chapter of the book, Gavin Heaton encapsulates beautifully, the appeal of blogs and blogging. “Never before has the marketplace of ideas been so free, the barriers to entry so low and the willingness to collaborate so powerful.”

I suspect it’s this low barrier to entry that so enrages Graeme Philipson. After all, you don’t need a university degree to write a blog post. Nor do you need someone to publish what you have written. You simply need access to the internet.

Gavin Heaton recently wrote a challenging post on his blog, taking Philipson to task over his anti-blogging piece.

“I am constantly amazed by the number of experts who are available to discuss blogging, new media, social networking and that strange and untamable beast, the Internet,” wrote Heaton.

“They are wheeled out across the mainstream media channels to provide some (kind of) insight or a point of view.” And yet, argues Heaton, “It is unclear exactly where the insight comes from.”

Melbourne based marketing blogger, David Koopmans, also took umbrage with Graeme Philipson’s article. “People participate in online communication,” says Koopmans, “because the web is now a place where you don’t need an understanding of technology to participate.”

“I can write a list of 50 people who are certified experts in their field, who write blogs. However, they are not bloggers; they are experts, who share their expert thoughts via the internet. I wonder if Graeme Philipson would consider the Sun Microsystems CEO, Jonathan Schwartz’s writing the unfiltered opinion of the common man.”

Believe it or not, I don’t completely disagree with Philipson. There are millions of blogs out there and a large proportion of them feature the ramblings of people with nothing better to do than share with the world their thoughts and feelings.

But what right do Graeme Philipson or I have to criticise these people? This is the age of conversation after all.

Stop by and visit:

Drew McLennan

Gavin Heaton

David Koopmans

Age of Conversation