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Schwartz On The Red Couch

Frankly this piece is so much better than BusinessWeek’s somewhat pathetic reporting on the Blogosphere. It gets at why Participatory Communications is turning the way businesses communicate on its head. It gets at how blogging builds dialog with and within communities.

Sun was fast to embrace blogging… Shel covers the blogosphere with comments from Noel ‘The Terrier’ Hartzel and Schwartz.

Noel’s quote gets at the new era of Participatory Communications which is upon us:

Sun’s blogging explosion was embraced without ambivalence by the corporate communications people. "Most PR teams would cringe, but ours didn’t. We have a transparent culture and competitors like HP do not. Our PR team is thinking about how to use technology and culture as a corporate weapon and blogging does both. Hartzell added, "Sun is a company whose success is based on building communities. So a key function of the communications team is to be an information gatherer, analyzer and counselor on participating in these communities. – Noel

“It’s kerosene on the fire. The Participation Age has been on the Net since email. Moving from there to blogging is like moving from carrier pigeon to phone. The emergence of blogs means we have passed beyond early crude tools and it results in fundamental changes on how everything relates. While a journalist is writing about my blog, I’m blogging about his journalism. This is change.” – Schwartz.

From Schwartz’ perspective, blogging is not an appendage to Sun’s marketing communications strategy, it is central to it. He believes that the 1000 Sun bloggers contribution hasn’t just moved the needle for the company, “they’ve moved the whole damned compass. The perception of Sun as a faithful and authentic tech company is now very strong. What blogs have done has authenticated the Sun brand more than a billion dollar ad campaign could have done. I care more about the ink you get from developer community than any other coverage. Sun has experienced a sea change in their perception of us and that has come from blogs. Everyone blogging at Sun is verifying that we possess a culture of tenacity and authenticity. “ – The Red Couch

3 Responses

  1. By Robin D. Stavisky on April 25th, 2005 at 9:37 pm

    Gad,that BusinessWeek piece was lame. I could hardly believe it can from the same publication that wrote on the “Vanishing Mass Market”. So right on of you to comment and thanks for the reference to Shel et al. Robin

  2. By Jack Russell on May 4th, 2005 at 12:04 pm

    As a fellow PR person who embraces who understands blogging, I find Noel to be keen and intelligent, spirited and self-assured. Lively and outgoing, he has a high energy level. A born digger, he can hunt down journalists like vermin. This instinct is very strong indeed.

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