Where are Canadian Corporate Blogs?
I've almost finished reading Naked Conversations, which is part of my summer reading series (The Long Tail, The Golden Spruce). Although I share Robert Scoble and Shel Israel's ardent enthusiasm for blogging, Naked Conversations comes across as almost too evangelistic. They believe blogs are/will be an essential marketing/communications tool that few companies should be without. They cite examples such as Kyrptonite, which was savaged a couple of years ago in the blogosphere when someone discovered you could open one of the company's locks with a Bic pen. Kryptonite didn't have a blog so it had no way to fight back other than using traditional PR tools. It lost the battle and ended up paying $10-million to compensate customers. Scoble and Israel's belief in blogs got me thinking about the Canadian corporate landscape and who's blogging. To the best of my knowledge, I don't think there is a large Canadian company that has a blog. Nortel, for example, would be a good candidate but the only blog dedicated to the company is one I write. Another good candidate would be Canadian Tire, one of Canada's largest retailers and one that's part of the country's cultural fabric. A corporate blog strikes me as a great way for Canadian Tire to talk about issues such as new products, store re-designs and new internal developments. So why are so many Canadian companies so blog-free? I'm not exactly sure other than Canadians, by nature, tend to be conservative. This includes the Internet where we lag behind the U.S. in e-commerce and online advertising even though we have the second highest broadband penetration in the world.
Update: Someone who left a comment suggested other potential corporate blog candidates include Tim Horton's, WestJet, Loblaws and the banks.
August 29th, 2006 at 9:05 am
Well if consider how few corporate blogs there are in the U.S. or abroad, why would you expect Candadian corporate blogs? Besides, what Canadian corporations would you like to see blogging?
And, dude, you gotta simply this comment form. At least hide the irrelevant details for new commenters (i.e. login).
August 29th, 2006 at 10:02 am
I have worked in several of the banks on designing blogs for sr. team members, and several of them were shot down by people with titles like “VP of Direct to Consumer Marketing”, with comments such as “There will be comments? We have an image to protect, we'd rather not let other people talk about us.” ….. They didn't seem to get the point that people are going to talk about them anyway.
- Jevon
August 29th, 2006 at 11:00 am
Canadian Space is not mature enough to get going on the blogtrain. Most insititutions dont want to let go of their so called “culture”. Blogging forces one to change their mind set.
PR is not the only value prop via a blog, there are many other types of value props that can be leveraged. However, this calls for two distinct attributes “ROI's” and “Resources”. How much should we spend and how much can we make ?
I have even asked Charlene Li- coudl you please share the metrics measures that you used at forrester that sustained that blogging creates wealth - So far- I have yet to get my hands on any such metric. Without measures and a substantial business case, no corporation can justify blogging, even blogs for internal purpose.
The traction for blogs is indivual and still *not* part of a corporate strategy and cannot become part of the strategy matrix until we have tools available to justify wealth leverage !!
so there.. a rant from a blogger within an F50 :)_
August 29th, 2006 at 11:47 am
Ask me again in 3 months, and I'll have a good national candidate for you.
August 29th, 2006 at 12:41 pm
Here are some reasons why one does not see more corporate blogs:
1. Most Executives have little insight into the value of a company blog.
2. Most Executives are “scared” to post thoughts and ideas in a public forum.
3. Most Exectuives would commercialize the medium, therefore diluting it's purpose and value.
4. Most Executives do not have the time to write on a consistent basis.
5. Blogs and other social mediums are new, and for Most Executives new is uncomfortable. Most Executives do not like to be uncomfortable.
Overall most companies just do not view social mediums such as blogs as worthwile business tools hence the lack of corporate blogs.
August 29th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
You have started some fun dialogue here. I might add the following:
1. historically Canadians seem to lag the US in the corporate world on adoption of technology or change by 12-18 months.
2. We also have a different type of corporate landscape in terms of competition than other countries. I think this changes the mindset of organizations.
3. I think it is always a challenge at the best of times for corporations to come up with communication strategies that allow for equal dialogue. I talked with a large company a couple of months ago and they really had a hard time getting their heads around this idea.
4. The time commitment also seems to be a real stumbling block.
I think the Canadian Telco and Cableco's are a perfect opportunity as they fight with the onset of global competition in the IP markets.
August 29th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
Mark,
Thanks for the kind mention of our book, Naked Conversations. I can certainly see why you could describe it as perhaps too enthusiastic.” As we stated early on, the book is intended to build the case for corporate blogging.” It is not intended as a balanced, jornalistic study. In both Canada and the US, corporate blogging is evolving slower than we had thought, but the flow of new blogs seems to be steadily building steam. Regulated industries such as banks, airlines, telcos and pharmas seem to be moving at predictabl slow paces. But Wells fargo has several blogs and plans more and John & Johnson is internally blogging and seems headed toward an external effort. In Canada Jim Estill, has a fine CEO blog which you can find here: http://www.jimestill.com. It may take longer than Robert and I had guessed, but I do believe that the shift from marketing monologues to conversational dialogs has gone too far and done too many companies too much good for the direction and speed of adoption to slow or reverse.
August 29th, 2006 at 6:55 pm
My bet is that the majority of the canadian companies who would contemplate blogs are in the process of defining their strategy and socializing the concept internally. Indeed, we are behind. But make no mistake, corporate Canada is thinking about it.
jules
August 30th, 2006 at 12:03 pm
Mark, given the fact Agoracom provides online investor relations for small-cap public companies (using monitored discussion forums), I think I can provide some practical feedback on this matter:
1] Time - The public will have to realize that CEO's can not blog with the frequency of today's bloggers. At best, you can expect a post every couple of weeks. As such, blogging is summarily dismissed by communications directors.
HOWEVER, for the investment community, that kind of personal contact would be well accepted. Investors don't want their CEO's typing out messages everyday - but would appreciate some periodic personal contact. If we can get this message to CEO's, we might be able to knock down the big barrier of believing blogs require daily posts.
2] Comments - You can bet that comments from investors would come in fast and furious. No CEO would be able to keep up and respond. That leaves you with two options. First, responses come from staff - but that eliminates the purpose of comments. Second, you remove comments all together and hope investors are happy to just receive personal messages.
3] Legal - I agree with you that if GM and Sun can run blogs, why would anyone else worry? The threat of litigation is deeply entrenched within the corporate cultre of public copanies, so you probably need a strong personality at the top to overcome it. Expect this to be the biggest barrier.
4] Personality - You and I know that personality goes a long way to making a blog interesting and successful. Unfortunately, so many CEO's are handled, coached and use canned messages to the point they've lost their ability to just be themselves. As such, there is a huge fear factor that - in my experience with CEO's - is warranted.
Conclusion - Blogging by CEO's will roll-out very slowly for the foreseeable future. It will only accelerate once either of the following events occur:
a) A high-profile CEO begins blogging and others are forced into it;
b) Blogging becomes widely used and accepted by the investment community.
“A” could happen anytime. “B” will take 2-3 years and is the most likely scenario.
Hope this helps.
Best,
George
September 1st, 2006 at 12:36 pm
Actually, I remember discussing this issue at a TSX-sponsored conference a coupld of months ago, and the view of the TSX officials was that a corporate blog could violate disclosure rules if the company is public. Most large corporations are public; ergo no blogs.
I am not a lawyer, but it's certainly an interesting legal question to have answered at some point.
September 3rd, 2006 at 7:27 am
Mark, great article on blogging and the sandbox its confined itself too, likely at the same time you were writing this post, I was having a conversation about Naked Conversations with a PR colleague of mine –I was of the same mind…added a post over at my blog Buzz Canuck on the ten companies that I thought should have blogs
September 4th, 2006 at 1:31 am
Tod Maffin write Inside the CBC, “the official blog of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.”
http://www.insidethecbc.com/
September 5th, 2006 at 11:45 am
I can tell you that it's being seriously discussed in the postsecondary education sector. Don't know when we'll see a serious attempt to transform a university into a conversation-based organization, but it's being talked about.