I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter (known in my family as I Can’t Believe We’re Eating This) is eschewing TV commercials in favor of a 4-part animated mock soap opera at TasteYouLove.com.

It’s certainly interesting when a retail product jumps off of TV. For one thing, the Web ad doesn’t interrupt me while I’m trying to do something else. And the first two episodes ICBINB has posted are a tiny bit amusing. But just a a tiny bit.

The problem is that products like ICBINB aren’t interesting. The script tries to make up for the product’s tedium by hitting the predictable soap opera parody points (handsome doctor, evil twin, amnesia), but it’s hard to believe that people are actually going to send this around to their friends. Maybe if the product made fun of itself instead of a tired TV genre…

I would love to see more advertising move off of TV and onto dedicated websites, as ICBINB has done. But the Web sites can’t be as boring as TV ads are. If you want our attention, now you’re going to have to earn it. Turning your bottle into an animated character that looks like Nicole Kidman just isn’t going to cut it. [Technorati tags: marketing]

Totally by coincidence – I swear! – our daughter was watching a Simpsons rerun just now that mentions www.SexySlumberParty.com, so I checked it out…

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PRSpeak thinks maybe it’s time to get the various people mouthing off about PR (I am one of those mouthers) into a room and produce something like a manifesto.

This isn’t a manifesto, but here’s a self-description I’d like to hear from a PR agency sometime:

1. Our PR agency’s aim is to help knowledge emerge in public.

2. We recognize that knowledge is a property of conversations.

3. Scientists, industry experts, businesses, enthusiasts, and users each have important and unique contributions to make to these conversations. No one group holds all the knowledge necessary.

4. So, the aim of this agency is to help enable the conversations from which knowledge emerges. [Here’s where a list of services would go.]

5. Our clients pay us to represent the public’s interest in having the honest and useful conversations that generate knowledge, because our clients believe that an increase in public knowledge is good for their business.

Could such an agency actually make money? I don’t know. That’s why it’s called “mouthing off.” [Technorati tags: PublicRelations PR]

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Jeneane jumps into the pr-blogging discussion. Good thoughts, good links. [Technorati tags: JeneaneSessum pr]

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Tim Bray has a terrific post on the Old and New public relations.

Here’s how I think about what’s going on with PR. (Note: Sweeping generalizations ahead.)

For decades there’s been a split in the industry between The Spinners and the Connectors. The Spinners think their job is to manipulate the truth for the one-sided benefit of their clients. They think they’re behind enemy lines and allowed to use every trick in the book to Win. The Connectors think their job is to connect the media and their clients and then get (pretty much) out of the way. Both, of course, do both. Connectors coach their clients in how to speak clearly, where “clarity” inevitably has elements of spinning, and Spinners work hard to get their spun words into the press.

Both bow at the altar of Brand. Brand is to be promoted. Brand is to be protected. All hail Brand.

About 20 years ago, Brand got spun, but in a useful way. Progressive PR folks started talking about Reputation Management instead of Brand Management. RM is exactly the same as BM (oh hush up, you children!) except that it recognizes two limits. First, reputations have to be based at least a little bit in reality; they are earned and can’t be merely spun out of nothing. Second, the customer has some say in it. BM too frequently thought it could foist any image on the market. You want to associate Coke with world peace? Just make up a catchy jingle about the world singing together. That’s BM. You want Coke to earn a reputation as being for world peace? Coke had better actually take some stands, donate some serious money, run some programs that help make the world peaceful without stamping the Coke brand on the forehead of every activist. (Two notes: 1. RM has strong elements of brand and spinning in it, of course. It’s a crazy, mixed up world. 2. See Chris Locke‘s Gonzo Marketing.)

Now I think PR is entering a phase where it sees itself as helping companies with their public relationships. (“Public Relationships — Adding hips to public relations”?) I first heard this term at EdelmanPR (disclosure: to whom I’m a consultant), but I don’t know who coined it. I find the phrase useful because it asserts a connection to traditional PR while pointing to a new dominant possibility. It implies, in line with Tim’s thinking, that PR needs to get out of the intermediation business. It means that more voices have to be allowed to speak from within the corporation, since relationships based on a committee-produced controlled voice will fail. It explains why blogs are such a useful tool: They are public relationships. It assumes there’s persistence to the relationship, not merely press releases thrown in our faces whenever the company has some new crap to flog. It assumes mutuality. It relies on the relationships being based on frankness and transparency.

Building public relationships seems to me to be a useful rubric for all that PR agencies do, including the traditional services they will continue to provide. For example, PR agencies are going to continue to scan editorial calendars looking for opportunities to get coverage for their clients, and they’ll continue to monitor and measure what’s being said. But if they do that within the context of building public relationships, perhaps they can help their clients get past their obsession with column inches. It’s not about that and it never was. It’s about building long-term, continuing, honest, mutual public relationships. (Richard Edelman, who blogged last week about some of the same points that Tim makes (and gives me too much credit), thinks that, in addition, PR agencies will find new business in producing substantive, factual content for their clients; this is an anti-spin position.)

And, like it or not, PR agencies will also continue to advise clients what to say. The CEO is always going to call an advisor she trusts to help figure out whether the main point about the acquisition of XYZ, Inc. is that it expands the company’s European presence or that it puts 300 new sales folks on the street to generate revenue. Inevitably this is spinning, but now (we hope) in a context where truth quickly embarrasses those who spin out of control and where the spun words are only a couple of threads in a far wider web.

I don’t know what the PR industry will be like in ten years. But I’m convinced that spinning — even truths expressed in words that sound phony — will be have the same effect as a salesclerk gobbing on a customer. [Technorati tags: pr PublicRelations TimBray RichardEdelman GonzoMarketing RageBoy Marketing Brand]

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Inside Knowledge devotes 2,300 well-written words (by Sandra Higgison) to the work of Euan “The Obvious” Semple at the BBC. Euan has been leading the BBC down the social software path before software was called social.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to wrestle my 75+ pages of notes on the Beeb’s digital make-over into 2,500 words for Wired. More words! I need more words!

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I write a column for Worthwhile magazine and occasionally blog there as well. The magazine has posted a pdf of my column in the current issue; it’s on why “Don’t be evil” doesn’t do much for me as a slogan.

Hey, I just realized that in the photo of me, they airbrushed out my moles! I knew I looked funny! [Technorati tags: worthwhilemag marketing]

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The K stands for blogs.

The M stands for tags.

Put ’em together and you get “KM.” [Technorati tag: km]

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StolenA3 is a “fun, interactive, fictional story sponsored by Audi” presented in the form of a blog. It failed to immerse me, but I seem not to be in their target demographic.

It’s transparent about it being an ad, maybe some people will find it fun, and it uses the word “batshit,” so does anyone have a problem with this? Besides, the coopting of blogs is a sure sign of their success.

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I’m at corporate HQ in Atlanta where the unusual number of kids is explained by the fact that it’s Bring Your Child to Work day. And thus ends childhood.

Note to self: Invest in anti-depressants.

I remember going to work with my father — he was a labor lawyer for NY State — and, well, let’s say it did not fill me with a desire to grow up. Still doesn’t.

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Graeme Thickens, in a de-hyping mood, gives ten reasons why businesses won’t blog. I agree that business has been slow to pick up on blogs, but I find too many of his reasons unconvincing. For example:

“Businesses don’t do passion.” True, but employees do. And employees, not businesses. write blogs.

“Business doesn’t like gossip.” So now we know which types of blogs Graeme’s been reading :)

“Businesses already communicate well in various ways.” Puhlease! Businesses can barely croak out intelligible phrases. Have you heard an executive talk recently? Or a marketer? That’s maybe the biggest reason why businesses ought to blog: Employees get to talk like humans.

“Business writing style and blogger style don’t even come close.” See above.

Other of his points make more sense to me. I agree that companies don’t like to do public experiments and blogs take time without providing an easy-to-measure ROI. And companies do need reassurance that they can have some measure of control over what gets blogged on their site: They can set up policies and editors.

But Graeme, I think, misses two points. First, blogs are more likely, IMO, to show up internally. As project groups come to rely on blogs as a great way of communicating and capturing their knowledge, companies will get more comfortable with outward-facing blogs. Second, Graeme ends by saying he’s much more excited about word-of-mouth marketing. From my point of view, the companies who succeed at word-of-mouth marketing will do so by entering the blogging fray as equals. [Technorati tag: blogs]

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