The general consensus from the conference seems to be that character blogs (fake blogs created by marketing departments that are supposedly written by the company’s mascot or other character) are, at least usually, lame. They are missing a key attribute of blogs: authenticity.

Some not-so-shining examples cited by today’s keynoters Steve Rubel and Shel Israel include:

• Captain Morgan – Oh, come on. A blog from a 19th-century pirate? The biggest problem here, though, is not the basic concept, but the fact that the character just isn’t strong enough. With no hard liquor ads on TV and radio, they just haven’t been able to breathe enough life into the Captain to make him believable. Frankly, I think the whole ad campaign sucks.
• Moosetopia, a blog about a moose traveling around the world, which supposedly relates somehow to Denali Flavors, a wholesaler of gourmet ice cream flavors. You know, their corporate blog is really good – exactly what a small business blog should be. But I just don’t get the moose thing either. Apparently some people do.
• Delicious Destinations – Fictitious “T. Alexander” and occasional real-life guests share ideas about food, gift giving, entertaining and culture. Does it suck? No, certainly not nearly as badly as the above two do. But the fictitious character just doesn’t add anything.
• The Lincoln Fry Blog – McDonald’s created an ill-fated ad campaign about two people discovering a french fry that looks like Abraham Lincoln. Actually, I found this one pretty amusing as satire. But effective marketing for McDonald’s? I don’t think so. If anything, it’s just a little too real, right up to the trackback spam from porn sites.

So are character blogs just completely lame? Steve Rubel thinks so, but Shel Israel is on the fence. He likes, for example, the Darth Vader blog, although it is (best guess) written by a fan, not a corporate marketing department.

My take on it, though, is that it’s not that there’s an inherent problem with character blogs, so much as that the examples above just aren’t based on a strong enough character to begin with.

What characters would I like to see blog?

• Jack – maybe even a group blog from the antenna balls – “Jack in the Blog”? (Choice quote from Shel: “How do people at that company ever think outside the box?”)
• Jiminy Glick could podcast behind-the-scenes stuff and outtakes.
• Ali G – Frankly, it would be far more entertaining than one from Sacha Baron Cohen.
• Dame Edna – Do you want to read a blog from Barry Humphries?
• Harvey Birdman – Can you imagine his blawg?
• Mickey Mouse – for kids – I wouldn’t read it (I’m not too sure about this one, but it’s a possibility)

Those would be purely for entertainment value, and I recognize that they (obviously) wouldn’t be “authentic”, but I think they could be done in a way that wouldn’t suck if there were a strong enough character as a foundation.

Apparently I’m not alone:

• AdJab and Vodkafish like Nigel’s Blog from Nigel Townsent, the medical examiner on NBC’s Crossing Jordan
• Stephen Spencer likes American Girl’s Felicity Blog
• Dave Taylor sees some potential in Panasonic’s Def Perception blog, although faults its execution.

I’m of very like mind to Dave, who says in his article on fake blogs:

[T]he real reason that story blogs aren’t better and therefore more popular is because it’s just darn hard to produce material week after week as a fictitious character.

And in his critique of the Panasonic blog:

That’s the fundamental problem with the “Tosh Bilowski” weblog effort from Panasonic and its PR agency in my eyes, not that it’s “fake” or that they’ve pretty clearly created a fictional ‘video geek’ to write about their product line, but that it’s just boring and unengaging.

What’s your take?
- What about the examples above? Do they work for you or no?
- Are character blogs inherently lame, or is there any possibility of a good one?
- If so, what character(s) would you like to see blog?

Tags: BloggingEnterprise, CorporateBlogging, CharacterBlogs

P.S. – It’s almost 3:00am here and I have a client on Thursday, my About.com weekly deadline Thursday night, and a meeting Friday morning, so it will be late Friday before I get the three or four other post-conference posts done that I’m planning.

I see and hear blogging success stories all the time from small businesses and solo practitioners, and there are well-known success stories from tech industry giants like Microsoft’s Channel 9 and Macromedia’s blogs. Todays’s panelists Todd Watson and Tom Parish also talked about IBM developerWorks blogs and Steve Rubel and Shel Israel told of several who have:

• GM FastLane from GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz
• BlogMaverick from Dallas Mavericks owner and serial entrepreneur Mark Cuban
• Association of National Advertisers, whose blog posts frequently get picked up directly by Advertising Age and other media
• Stonyfield Farm, who provides an inside look at the company, plus three topical blogs on the issues their customers are interested in
• Vespa is supporting Vespa-related blogs with early looks at Vespa products and services, free accessory merchandise and media exposure
• Boeing, with their sponsorship of inFlightHQ and their ground-breaking 777 Flight Test Journal (though Shel also blasted their Marketing VP Randy Baseler’s blog for being a smarmy whitewash job)
• Richard Edelman, head of the world’s largest PR firm (Shel: “He gives me access to conversations which I could otherwise never be a part of.”)
• Vichy, a French cosmetics firm that, after a major faux pas with a fake blog, redeemed itself with a blog led by one of France’s top women bloggers recounting the stories of several real women as they go through the process of peel microabrasion

Rubel says that companies need to connect directly with their customers in the online world by:
1. Find
2. Listen
3. Engage
4. Empower

Shel Israel says that the winning attributes for a blog are:
- Authenticity
- Passion
- Authority
- Human fallibility
- Frequency
- Integrity

John Moore said (one of my favorite sound bites from the conference), “With blogs, small can look big and big can get small.”

What’s your take?
- What other large corporations outside of the tech industry are using blogs effectively?
- What are effective strategies for corporate blogs?
- How can corporations “join the conversation”?

Tags: BloggingEnterprise, CorporateBlogging

Steve Rubel kicked off the day with a moment of silence for “old media”. OK, that may be a bit over the top, but as Austin American-Statesman Managing Editor Fred Zipp and Washington Post Opinion and Blogs Editor Hal Straus readily admitted, traditional newspaper readership is down (Washington Post was down 3% last year). According to panel moderator Lorraine Branham, a recent study reported that 44% of college students get news daily from internet portals vs. just 19% from newspapers.

That may signal a major shift in media, but the general consensus is that although citizen journalism may be a major new force to be reckoned with, blogging and journalism are not one and the same. As Jon Lebkowsky put it, many journalists are bloggers, and some bloggers may be journalists, but they each have their own set of rules.

Fortunately, everyone seemed to agree that there’s a place for both, and a potential symbiotic relationship between them. There’s simply too much going on in politics, corporations and other organizations for mainstream media to play the role of watchdog for everyone. Bloggers, who may focus on a very specific niche, help in that coverage. In the case of the Slidell Hurricane Blog, blogger Brian Oberkirchs quickly developed a working relationship with CNN and other major media, sharing information as soon as it was available, often before it ran. Bloggers can also help keep a story alive, providing continuing coverage that a mainstream journalist may not be able to do due to time and space constraints, but then come back to for a follow-up.

Straus said that for many years, the Washington Post ignored blogs. They saw blogs that weren’t “relevant, accurate and balanced” and avoided the topic. But the 2004 presidential campaign, particularly Howard Dean’s use of blogs, Meetup and other tools was a major turning point. By December 2004 they had decided to implement blogs and launched within six months. They have since noticed measurable increases in traffic and search engine rankings. They are also now looking at ways to embrace community journalism by opening up their platform to high schools and other community organizations.

The Austin American-Statesman have been some of the early adopters of blogging among traditional newspapers, first experimenting with blogs two years ago as a way to expand the types of information they could display to the public. The most successful have been the entertainment beat writers and the UT football blog, Bevo Beat. In September 2005, they became one of the first major-market newspapers to launch reader blogs. The motivation? While I was kind of hoping for some lofty vision of embracing consumer journalism, Zipp’s answer was much more practical: recouping some of that readership and traffic that was being sucked away by all this new media. Hey — it’s a business.

This topic is particularly hot right now, particularly in light of the recent debate over the controversial Forbes article and the current debate over whether bloggers should have the same rights as journalists regarding protected sources.

So what’s your take?
- Is old media dead? Or just going through a metamorphosis?
- Are bloggers journalists? And does it matter?
- Should bloggers be afforded the same right to protect sources that journalists are?
- How can mainstream media and bloggers best work together symbiotically rather than adversarially?

Tags: BloggingEnterprise, CitizenJournalism