Johnnie Moore

Some professional communication

Johnnie Moore

Johnnie Moore

I’m Johnnie Moore, and I help people work better together

James Byford posts about the link up between Technorati and Ogilvy. James raises some good questions about what it means.

I find the comments Technorati make about it depressingly full of hype and jargon.

To start with, could we be spared the sycophancy of saying Ogilvy are “one of the world’s preeminent advertising agencies” and “some of the worlds best creatives”. (I find those “one of” type comments are pretty much endemic in most flatulent PR output)

Then I’m trying to figure out what this means:

Ogilvy creatives and account teams will use Technorati’s conversational marketing products to build relationships between brands and conversations relevant to those brands.

I cringe at the idea of a conversational marketing product. And what does it mean to create a relationship between a brand and a conversation? Is that different from…err.. plain old having a conversation?

Apparently this “will result in the the creation of destination sites”. What’s a destination site? Is it different from just a plain old ordinary website? Is “destination” just a way of saying “more important that just a regular old site that the rest of you get to make”?

But wait, there’s more: “For bloggers and other citizen media creators it means new forms of distribution and awareness”. Wow, new forms of awareness. You thought this was just some bloggy product launch, but actually it’s a profound change in our collective levels of consciousness.

When it continues…

As we developed this product line it was clear that the best way to advance the state of the art was to show some of the worlds best creatives on what was possible and then work with them and major brands on how to build sites and advertising that reflect the conversations and passions of each brand’s identity.

I start to despair. Reflecting the passions of a brand’s identity? And do they really think in Web 2.0 that the best thing is work with just “some of” the best creatives?

Ah well, never mind. Technorati are just bloggers aren’t they? Thank goodness we can turn to the communication pros at Ogilvy for clarity.. in their news release.

Well, first we have to get past the obligatory return of sychophancy: Techorati is, it seems “the recognized authority on the global Live Web”. None of that “one of” feebleness here, the pre-emiment creatives can churn out the flattery undiluted. Technorati is the authority. And I naively thought the Live Web was fun because no-one was in charge…

I didn’t find this very illuminating either:

By partnering with Technorati, we can offer our clients an innovative engagement point with the Live Web. Key to this is defining measurable ways to integrate blogs and other citizen media on behalf of brands… brands gain an opportunity to affirmatively enter into conversations related to their brand, and authentically promote themselves across the Live Web

A case of adverbitis there. And what’s an innovative engagement point?

Still, at least Ogilvy’s client, Marianne Samenko of Kodak, speaks English: “Technorati will help us understand what is going on in the blogosphere, which will be tremendously useful to our brand.” Now that I can understand. Though I hope she’s not going to rely on Technorati or Ogilvy to explain it in any more detail to the rest of us.

UPDATE: Some slightly more constructive criticism from Rik, who sees this going one of two ways:

If, however they… choose to venture out to invent a new way of talking with their customers, all will be hanky dory. I for one would love to be on the team figuring this out. Until that happens I’ll be on the sideline cheering. But if I had to take a guess based on the fuzzy tone of their introduction, my bet would be that it’ll be more of the first option and less of the second, because, you know, having a conversation involves a lot of listening and a lot of clarity.

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