My buddy David Gelles is now a Technology reporter and blogger for the Financial Times and I was so happy to see David writing about Twitter PR, something very dear to my heart, Companies use Twitter to pack PR punch, including Scott Monty of Ford as well as the gang from PepsiCo’s Pepsi Max controversy

By Jonathan Trenn: 

may as well take a stab at it…

1) The relationship between traditional agencies and clients will strengthen, then start to fall apart

The recession means that marketing executives will be wanting to stay with the things that they’re familiar with…meaning traditional advertising.  This is bad news for many of us who look to make our coin in the online arena.  But in many sectors, the traditionals will not be able to adequately address the then current needs of clients.  Cost inefficiencies and the lack of imagination will combine to force marketing executives to look more and more at social media.  Most traditional agencies won’t be ready.  The changes will begin to be noticeable in late 2009.

By Jonathan Trenn:  

In one business day, Scott Monty showed us why companies still own their brand, why PR still matters, and why he’s a top notch social media strategist.

TheRangerStation.com, a 10 year old fan site for Ford Ranger owners and enthusiasts, had been selling unliscenced Ford merchandise with the Ford logo on it.  This caught the attention of the Ford legal team who promptly sent TheRangerStation a cease and desist letter.  When TheRangerStation’s owner went public about the letter, chaos began to ensue as the owner conveniently omitted the fact that he had been selling counterfeited material.  This began a backlash from many online where they bought into the idea that the little guy was being knocked around by the huge company.

I posted version one of this article on my blog already. I showed it to Matt Creamer, my editor over at AdAge, and he told me he didn’t care if I had already posted it but that I would need to add a couple primer paragraphs to bring people into the history behind the Whopper Virgins controversy. I wrote a couple-few paragraphs and submitted and Matt posted it yesterday, One Whopper … and Hold the Ugly-American Sauce:

In yet another example of why corporations don’t understand what social media really is, we now see that in a Forrester survey, corporate blogs are finishing dead last amongst eighteen categories as a source of information. The reason? The blogs are being perceived as being too promotional, as pushing positive stories on the company, its products and services. Gee. What a surprise.

Only 16% of respondents felt that corporate blogs bred a decent level of trust. Email form people one knows was the highest with 77%. This tells me four things.

Back in 2000, I. along with several others here in the Washington area, started a group called Wired for Business.  It was one of those vibrant business technology groups that came about right around the millenium, one that had members enthusiastically discussing the future of business as we saw it happening.  Our focus was primarily on BtoB and telecom.

By our second event, we had 200+ people attending, potnetial sponsors calling us showing us that they were willing to drop as much as $3000, and speakers with titles such a VP of Importance Division lined up.  We rocked.  We got a prestigious Board of Advisors and also top notch organizations involved.  

Then the dot.bomb era struck in full force.  

Please enjoy my latest AdAge Global Idea Network blog post, Social Media Are Truly Global — Just Ask a Slovakian: Don’t Underestimate the Reach of Twitter, Facebook: (Via Adage via Chris Abraham )

Social Media Are Truly Global — Just Ask a Slovakian: Don’t Underestimate the Reach of Twitter, Facebook

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