A weekend conversation about social media and the value PR brings to the table got me thinking about our industry’s value cascade — how we transmit value to clients and employers under the best scenarios, vs some less-than-best variants. Here’s what I think it looks like on the consulting side:

Ideally, we deliver expertise, which drives the formation of custom strategies. These strategies, combined with access, deliver results and value.

If we lack any one of the three legs of the proverbial stool, we can still make things work, albeit with different approaches. Read more …

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Over at Collaborative Marketing Services, they’re asking a question sure to warm the collective hearts of the buzzword-compliance set: What is open source marketing?

Great question. Unfortunately, I’m not sure they have the full answer. OK, I am sure, but I’m being professional.

The article’s thesis goes something like this: More choice in the marketplace means monolithic brands — and the equally monolithic media buys used to support them — are going the way of the dodo. (Insert Cluetrain-ish stuff… insert Seth-like stuff… etc.)

There are good points in there, but much of it has a dotcom-heyday feel. More importantly, they focus on the community-driven aspect of open source software, but don’t spend nearly enough time discussing how explicit licensing and copyright choices allow these communities to flourish.

I’m not sure there’s such a thing as open source marketing — at least, I wouldn’t put that name on any of the trends now unfolding. Now, open source branding? That’s another matter. It exists today, often as a byproduct of fast-growing online companies or communities. And it’s a great example of branding backward.

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Earlier this month, I was a panelist at an American Marketing Association discussion about blogs and branding. It was a good group — attendees who ran the gamut from students to senior corporate marketers, and fellow panelists with far more brain power than I.

One question that came up — the same one that always comes up when you get marcom gatekeepers in a room and start talking about decentralized communications — went something like this: “But how do you control the message? You can talk all day about potential, but what are the risks?”

:::insert sinister music:::

Enter these guys, who seem perfectly happy to tell you that not only are there risks, but they’re damned scary.

Luckily, there are cooler heads about — and they’re not charging over $1,000 for their advice, which is more than the authors of the above-referenced report can say.. Suw over at Corante points out some of the myriad problems with this report, aided by Michael O’Connor Clarke.

My favorite quote:

“Blogs are not a threat to business. Stupidity is a threat to business. Ergo, this report is a threat to business.”

Are there challenges in letting your employees talk online about your company? Yes. Is there some need for basic ground rules? Yes. But the real sign that business blogging is an effective marketing tool may be that the snake-oil salesmen are now trying to profit from it.

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Tim Oren takes a macroeconomic look at the challenges legacy media faces these days, and every ad manager, newsroom editor and executive news producer should take a long, hard look. Are you a smart communications pro? Then consider this piece a strategic glimpse into the future and start planning on how you’ll deal with it.

(Surgeon General’s warning: If you’re not up to some economic theory —well written but still not exactly a Dick and Jane Reader — then this link could pose a risk of brain aneurysm.)

Jeff Jarvis did such a fabulous job of summing up that I’ll quote him here:

What’s so fascinating about Tim’s post is that he takes a social issue — news and trust — and measures it through a business perspective. I have always said that in the news business, our only asset is credibility. Tim is now measuring the declining value of that asset in the midst of scandal and in the face of new, trusted competition.

Go read it; this is important stuff if you want to understand where PR and broad-reach marketing will be in a few years.

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Poor ol’ Tom Humphrey, the Nashville bureau chief for the Knoxville News Sentinel, has his knickers in a twist about blogging. Burdened (that seems the right word, given his tone) with the task of jotting down some material before heading off to cover the GOP convention in NYC, he leads off with this quip:

After all, bloggers, I am instructed, do not have to follow those ironclad rules of attribution, fact-checking, logic and such that burden the daily production of stuff to print by traditionally ink-stained wretches. You can just babble like a talk show radio guy.

Well, um… no. Wrong.

Read more …

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Mike Davidson — insert a genuflect here if you know anything about online design — has a great primer for recent design grads.

Lots of wisdom in there for any newly minted communications pros, designers or not.

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