Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR & Marketing

Spot The Real Ad

When those trendspotters PFSK noticed a really poor Absinthe ad on their site, they contacted the advertiser and asked if they could make the brief public.  The brand manager agreed and even offered a prize.  One of these is the original and one is the winner.  Which do you think is which?

How To Spy on Blogs

Today's FT reports on a company offering a service to Big Pharma companies that allows them to,"scan weblogs, newsgroups and forums for exchanges of information between patients'.  Netrank, a UK company, has been promoting its i-reputation service to GSK, Pfizer and Johnson on the idea that they can,"warn companies of potential side effects".  The FT portrays this service as spying...

Well Said

I am currently working with Steve Moore at Ice-3 on a project that will help the UK educational sector explore Open Source Marketing and its implications.  When explaining how the web has progressed Steve has this great explanation.

"Online communities used to be about sharing knowledge, now they have are about generating knowledge.  They are communities of development and design."

Outside-In Parliament

In this week's Observer, David Yelland (ex-Sun editor and now Chairman of Weber Shandwick PR) writes about his experiences on David Puttnam's Commission, which was created to look at the future of the UK Parliament.  The commission was pretty scathing but the findings weren't very surprising.  Basically it found that Parliament...

Without Prejudice

Mark Lloyd came to an Open Sauce Surgery last week and has posted this feedback on his new blog -  Without Prejudice.  Mark is a digital lawyer and I fully intend to consult him about the many tricky legal aspects that are arising within modern marketing.  He is very approachable so you should do the same if you are scratching your head about an aspect of the emerging digital world.  (The next Surgery is on the 5th July).

Blogs Aren't Magic - Just Easy

I was talking to a senior executive at a large, London-based web consultancy yesterday and she asked me about blogs, blog-hype and my service Managed Blogs. I went onto explain that there is nothing magical about blog themselves...

Cobra Beer Goes Outside-In

Cobra Beer is running a campaign called Cobravision.  It is a competition for people to send in their films, the best of which are running as slots on ITV2.  The company has received some great entries which can be seen at the Film Gallery, all of which bring the brand's 'Inspired' positioning to life.  I particularly like Trevor Hardy's Happy Hour which has already appeared on TV.  It's a great example of embracing the changes brought about by distributed media, using open source marketing techniques.

Wnek is a T-Rex II

The Independent published (an edited version of) my response to Mark Wnek's article yesterday...all of which left Hugh at Gaping Void feel the schadenfraude rising.

IBM Insight

Nev and Shel have this interview with Mike Wing, a strategic comms guy at IBM.  It's pretty meaty but gives a good insight into the megacorp's massive blogging project.  I was particularly interested by Mike's comment that IBM's main intention is to, 'learn and experiment'.

PR Survival Guide

I spent 8 years in traditional PR (Burson-Marsteller/Accenture) before moving to the online space in 1999.  Over the last couple of years the two areas have come together in very exciting ways.  Alot of the issues that I find so invigorating are discussed in the latest chapter of the book by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel.  Well worth a read...