Something we all try to do is make sure our rhetoric matches our actions. When promising deliverables to a client, when pitching new business, when speaking to the media.
Something that we all try to do is impress on our clients of their rhetoric matching their actions.
On a completely related note, I’ve noted before the lack of great case studies for social media in the PR industry – despite there being a huge amount of time, money and hot air being invested in social media practices.
Perhaps there’s a certain independent, international agency that is too concerned with getting its expensive social media practice work than with making sure the counsel it gives its clients?
I don’t really want to rail unnecessarily against a competitor, but given the exacting ethical standards they set out in regards to editing Wikipedia (and released to some fanfare on Steve Rubel’s blog) I’m surprised that this latest scandal has been met with such deafening silence.
- Todd Defren – great conversation in the comments
- Owen Lystrup – as always, a thorough and intelligent analysis
- Shel Holtz – doesn’t like the silence
- Constantin Basturea – why sign up to something (Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s code of ethics) if you can’t guarantee you can’t live up to it? Note to Paull Young: Probably why the larger agencies haven’t joined in the astroturfing debate; they can’t guarantee that no one does it
- Strumpette – just because
*Updated Sunday Morning*
- Tony Hung – also calls the agency of “do what I say, not what I do!” via…
- Mathew Ingram – wonders why this story hasn’t gotten more general interest/technology pick-up. If you’re in Toronto, ask him yourself at the newly re-arranged Third Tuesday Toronto, this Tuesday at the Spoke Club (Gallery Room) starting at 6pm!
*Updated Friday Oct 20*
- David Jones also chimes in with a quote from our CEO, Dave Senay, which he lifted from his (Senay’s) internal blog. It’s heartening to see that there’s a way to easily access the people in the know in our firm about these sorts of things
- I’ve been having a bit of an “e-duel” with a new friend, Judy Gombita (the most active blogger without a blog) and she feels that it’s a storm in a tea-cup as demonstrated by the MSM’s lack of pick up. She points to these comments on John Wagner’s blog as illustrating her point
Ed Lee's Blogging Me Blogging You | @edlee 
Thanks for the kind mention Ed.
I find the hypocrisy a little outrageous; the silence makes it all the more damning (and quite frankly all the more complicit)
Cheers
Tony (Go Canada!)
So now my new e-dueling mate, Ed, is in deep sh*ite for outing my opinion, as I’d deliberately stayed away from commenting in an online forum. Maybe it’s my work environment, whose code of ethics is pretty explicit in outlining the rules for criticism of colleagues:
http://www.cga-ontario.org/contentfiles/publications_promotions/ethic.aspx?order=156#r5
(But, then again, that’s within a regulatory, professional association.)
I’d also like to add that in the course of the “debate” a central tenet to my argument was that the “story” didn’t meet the John Valorzi Criteria for “real” news (quantifiable figures/qualitative effects).
And so it goes.