DISQUS

There's of course room for disagreement with the tactical execution. Even people at Agency.com would allow for that. Would it be better if Skittles initially established itself in some organic way in these communities? Certainly.

I was more referring to the general tenor of the negative reactions. Many of them were not very constructive. It was like that Internet thing that makes me cringe to just blurt "FAIL." It's part Internet commenter culture, part advertising backbiting.

As a practical personal matter, the taboo on failures sucks. Nobody will discuss stuff that came up short. Instead, they just want to talk about their successes, which are dwarfed by the down the middle mediocrity of most of their work. Lots of industries face this dilemma. Risk-taking is not a part of my own industry, media. Look how that's working out.

Hmm, I didn't call it 'advertorial' really. I called it a 'new take' on advertorial. That means different. Here's what i actually wrote:

"The Panasonic program is one of several undertaken by brands carving out a new take on the old notion of advertorial. Rather than relying on magazines, they are contracting with influential bloggers who bring with them their own powerful distribution networks. Rather than a long-form narrative, content is fit for the Web via blog posts, Twitter updates and YouTube videos. And the key differentiator: instead of dictating the content to lead to a sale, brands typically keep their distance to maintain credibility."

Note the last sentence, please. I'm sure the marketing firms who come up with these things have a fancy term they put on it to sell through to clients. I'm not in marketing.

And to be clear, again, this was one of several examples of brands connecting with Web hotshots for content and buzz. People can argue until the cows come home whether this is "authentic" or not. It seems like the participants are doing no harm with their readers. When they do cross the line, as in the Microsoft example with FM, readers will quickly let them know.

The big question is what does Panasonic get out of this? Yeah, it's part of lots of stuff around CES and "Living in High Definition," but that can often just be an excuse not to prove any benefit for the brand. Will this become another flavor of the month?

Awesome. I think there's an entire story left to tell about business silos.

Hey,
Thanks for the help with the story. Sorry I demoted you.

I tried to cover the more expansive view of social media later in the story. Admittedly, it's hard to cover all the bases in a 1600-word story, but this is one I tried to touch. Here's one part: "The challenge is conversations that cut across organizational silos. A single data set of customer feedback can apply to the marketing department wanting to know if its messages resulted in increased share of voice versus its competitors; customer service eager to know of problems before they ignite a firestorm; and product management in search of insights into unmet customer needs. No one set of metrics can apply to such a diverse set of constituencies,"

-B