The Buzz Bin

Simultaneously posted on the Diva Marketing Blog and the Buzz Bin.

This week BBF Toby Bloomberg, Diva Marketing Blog, and I had lengthy conversations about a post written by Ad Age Executive Editor, Jonah Bloom. We were surprised to find that Mister Bloom’s post was written more in the style of tabloid reporting than of a respected journalist holding a senior position with a highly regarded publication. Bloom called out crayon CEO Joseph Jaffe for coloring the truth in a recent blog post announcing a second round of significant changes at the company.

“If Jaffe has fallen on hard times, he might want to consider applying for one of those big, corporate PR jobs where the key to success is saying and writing nothing, but employing so many unwieldy long sentences and so much repetition and jargon that no one ever guesses. Certainly this effort vaults him straight into the Spinmasters’ Hall of Bullshit.”

We both found Jonah Bloom’s/Ad Age’s coverage of crayon’s challenging situation disgraceful to the extent that we are collaborating on this post.

So what if there was some jargon and spin? Taken from a PR perspective, what was Jaffe supposed to say, “We just lost half our senior team because we can’t win enough business?” Wasn’t that clear enough in the letter?

As experienced practitioners, we see right through this post as exploitative, exaggerated yellow journalism. And quite frankly, it’s disappointing to see this occur under the Advertising Age banner, the so-called industry authority hosting the Advertising Age Power 150.

Perhaps you’ve been privy to the changes at crayon, outlined in this letter by Joseph Jaffe. First the high profile departures of Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz. And now there were these recent moves, specifically the departures of Steve Coulson, CC Chapman, and Gerry Cohen. Certainly, changes of this nature garner attention, especially when the faltering party is an agency like crayon.

Neither of us knows Jonah Bloom; however, his bio suggests that his career has been spent working for journalist organizations that could guarantee salary/benefits and not as an entrepreneur. The world of a small business, especially a start-up firm, is quite different. There are sleepless nights worrying that a client’s check will come in before the light bill is due. Projects you were certain would pop are put on hold. Then there are the continuous expenses for the cost of doing business. But if you believe in your dream you make adjustments and trade the Starbucks mocha latte for a coffee made in your own kitchen.

Regardless of Jonah’s responsibility for penning this disgraceful post, Advertising Age itself has a responsibility here. And as marketing bloggers that are technically covered by the magazine, we demand better standards of journalism from Advertising Age.

Impact?

Jonah Bloom’s post brings up a larger issue for us and many questions. Granted that Mister Bloom was writing a blog not a column. Is a blog post written by a publication’s editor or reporter an op-ed piece? Even so should the post be held to the same journalist standards set for the publication’s articles?

Are the lines blurring to the effect that blogging within a journalist setting e.g., Ad Age, mean the blogger is sanctioned to color outside of acceptable guidelines and branding expectations of the publication? Would Ad Age have published Jonah Bloom’s post as an article? What obligation does the “journalist blogger” have to reflect the publication’s brand image?

Neither of us knows the current crayonistas outside of the usual Facebook and Twitter interactions. However, crayon represented so many of the ideal hopes of the blogosphere and the Cluetrain Manifesto, it’s hard not to root for the agency.

At the same time it’s hard not to see these recent events as a disappointment. Not just because of the missteps outline in Jaffe’s letter, but because crayon is more than a company. It’s a dream that we all want to achieve. A marketing profession that is based in transparent, honest, ethical and exhilarating social media communications.

Both of us want to be 100% social media all the time. But getting companies to buy into this new world concept is not easy. For example, the four person firm Livingston Communications gets two thirds of its revenues from traditional public relations clients. The rest is social media.

We understand the challenges and difficulties of getting and keeping a full portfolio of social media clients. And we congratulate all of the crayonistas past and present for their courage in pursuing this noble dream. And to the remaining crayons — Joe, Greg and Scott — we wish you the best of luck in your continuing efforts whatever color they may be

– Toby Bloomberg and Geoff Livingston

Related Posts (updated 9/15):

• Marketing Abstraction “Jaffe Gets Slapped Down”
• PR Works “The Blogging and the Damage Done”
• Student PR Blog “crayon Effectively Out of Business”
• Better Communication Results: “On ethics, social media and good manners”

P.S. As a personal follow-up, it only seems appropriate to note that Advertising Age is probably the most venerable publication in the traditional advertising business. It has made several forays into covering the marketing blogosphere with posts like this, and, most notably, with its acquisition of Todd And’s Power 150.

While the actual 150 love this index for obvious reasons, there is an increasing groundswell of dissatisfaction with Advertising Age amongst the lower ranked bloggers and the marketing blogosphere, in general. The integrity and merits of this index since Advertising Age has acquired it are highly questionable.

The Advertising Age 150 uses a subjective measure, and a Bloglines measures that features an antiquated, out-of-date and increasingly unused reader with thousands of dormant accounts to determine RSS weight. These two measures comprise half of the index score. Advertising Age also doesn’t prune its leaves, letting dead blogs lie in the 150 for months. It does not update RSS feeds and URLs when a blog changes its address, like our friend Kyle Flaherty’s Engage in PR. And highly influential communications bloggers like Ike at Occam’s Razr “do not qualify” to be listed.

If Advertising Age does come to read this post, I encourage them to reinvigorate the index with more factors to counterbalance blatant subjectivity and inaccurate RSS counts. Otherwise — as far as this blogger is concerned — the Ad Age 150 does not hold any weight. Further, given this series of missteps one must wonder if Advertising Age will be successful in its efforts to cover “us.”

GL