Thanks for your permission to email you with the Friday Roundup today.

It's been over a decade since Seth Godin published Permission Marketing and as the Wikipedia entry for the book and the term says, the undesirable opposite of permission marketing is interruption marketing. In short, if you have to interrupt me without my permission in order to attract my attention, then all you've done is distracted me from what I was otherwise interested in. And if you do that, you simply risk putting your brand on the back foot as a result.

I've been interrupted a lot this week.

Downton AbbeyFirstly there was the first episode of this season's must-watch period TV drama on British TV (I know, but what can I say, I like them!) Downton Abbey has the perfect stoneware pudding bowl full of characters and plot lines, but it also had something else in abundance, and to a saturation uncommon for Britain, adverts. The Guardian was none too pleased either.

Second, how many of you enjoy those ads that take up your entire browser when all you want is the content? I've been counting... 9 this week.

Third, I followed a link to a video a friend said I'd like. Unfortunately, I don't know if I do because I had no intention waiting for a 60 second car advert to show, particularly as I've just bought a car and I wasn't interested in the marque interrupting me anyway.

Surely there must be better ways to connect marketers and content. I know the adverts pay for the dramas we love, but I won't be watching any of the ads now; I'll 'time-shift' episode 2. Better four classy, memorable one-minute adds in the hour than seven bundles of hectic 30-second rubbish. I'd watch it live then.

And this all goes to show that I can empathise just a little with those poor journalists on the receiving end of so-called PR spam. Non-relevant interruptions to their day caused by the spray-and-pray practices of the lesser practitioner. If this matter concerns you, if you don't want to be annoying the very people you hope to influence, do check out the Media Spamming Charter published this week by the CIPR, PRCA and IRS. If you know what's good for business, do make sure your PR team subscribes to it and has the discipline to stick to it.

Best regards, Philip and the MarCom Professional team.

Content Marketing: Paid, Owned and Earned Media

by David H Deans of Digital Lifescapes
There are three kinds of content marketing -- paid, owned and earned media. Paid media is advertising inserted next to another publisher's content; owned media is brand-created content; and earned media is when an independent publisher provides content about a product or service.

"Each medium offers distinct advantages, and it is important that all work together," said David Hallerman, eMarketer senior analyst. "The best approach is holistic, where each channel supports the others, as when paid advertising produces earned word-of-mouth, which stimulates traffic to owned microsites." More...

Should you be using White Papers for B2B lead generation?

by Rebecca Caroe of Creative Agency Secrets

A white paper has long been seen as a ‘serious’ way for a B2B business to position itself as a thought leader in its niche. Reading an Economist article recently about the glut of white papers (and my comment) being produced by management consultancies under the guise of research and new thinking, made me reflect on the number of white papers I’ve had cause to author, promote and release to clients’ databases of contacts.

Why do it?

The usual rationale for writing and publishing elegantly-crafted, well-researched opinion statements is that it positions your organisation as a leader in its field. More...

The twitter tax and what it really says about your business

by Andrew Grill of London Calling

Both Lucy Kellaway (whom I have never met but would like to) and Jonathan Salem Baskin (with whom I shared an enjoyable dinner in London a few months ago) have written excellent pieces on the use of twitter for customer service.  I also wrote a piece about this 12 months ago. Jonathan talks in his article for Ad Age titled simply “the twitter tax” of his epiphany after speaking to a colleague who had used twitter to complain about poor customer service.

“Tools like Twitter aren’t some dream of customer empowerment, but rather the nightmare reality of the broken relationships between consumers and brands. More...

Banks behaving bravely - ASB Bank's FaceBranch

by Walter Adamson of NewLeaseG2M

ASB Bank's Facebranch, said to be "the first 'Virtual Branch' application of its kind to be launched by a bank on Facebook", isn't especially interesting to me for its Facebook functionality but rather for its fronting up to the usual corporate fears of social media.

The three most common themes among business executives hesitant about social media are still:

how do we "protect" the brand?
what control do we have over people saying bad things about us?
How do we control what our staff can say?

Bad Banks recently nominated ASB Bank for the 2009 Roger Award, given annually to the "Worst Transnational Corporation Operating in Aotearoa/New Zealand". More...

Crowdsourced Q&A with CIPR President Jay O’Connor

by Stephen Waddington of Speed Communications

The last 18-months have been a turbulent period for the CIPR. But change is in the air at the headquarters in Russell Square.

A new CEO has been appointed, a new web site and online Continuous Professional Development (CPD) scheme have been launched, there’s the social media panel, and a series of committees have scrutinised almost every aspect of the CIPR’s internal workings in a bid to connect the professional membership organisation with its members.

I should disclose at this point that I’m a member of the social media panel and have contributed to one of the committees that have examined the relevancy of the CIPR to its members. More...

The Social Network: Ecosystem vs. Egosystem

by Brian Solis of PR 2.0

Of all the social networks competing for our online persona and social graph, Twitter is special. The culture and self-governing rules of engagement shaped by the “me” in social media, create a personalized  experience that looks and feels less like a “social” network and instead, creates as an empowering information exchange.

Twitter is at the heart of the Web’s evolving egosystem and its archetype is powerful and quite understated.  For better or worse, Twitter introduces the notion of notion of popularity, whereby the numbers of followers and also the friend to follower ratio we possess indicate ones stature within Twitterverse. More...

Guest post: Small changes the PR industry should make to generate SEO revenue

by Stephen Waddington of Speed Communications

I’ve been debating for the last three-months or so whether the PR industry has missed an opportunity in search engine optimisation (SEO). The rise of a multi-million pound industry alongside the PR industry indicates that this is almost certainly the case.

In the guest post that follows Kelvin Newman, SiteVisibility’s Creative Director, makes the case that SEO offers a revenue opportunity for the PR industry. He’s also the editor of the UK’s most listened to Marketing Podcast (according to iTunes). More...

CIPR TV featuring the High Priest of Publicity, Mark Borkowski

by Philip Sheldrake of Influence Crowd LLP

Wadds and I benefited once again from the excellent work of the team at Markettiers4dc and another great guest this show, Mark Borkowski, MD of the eponymous Borkowski. Not exactly renowned for being a wallflower, Mark tells it how he sees it. We had some great questions submitted live via Twitter, and to be honest we could have chatted for twice the time!

My favourite comment relates to the attentiveness of advertising account managers to their clients needs. The quote won't pass you by :-) More...

BOOK REVIEW: Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead

by Trevor Young PR Warrior of Parkyoung

Okay, this would have to be one of the coolest business book titles ever: MARKETING LESSONS FROM THE GRATEFUL DEAD.

The concept is also interesting - authors David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan draw parallels between the way the iconic rock band the Grateful Dead operated in the 60s (and 70s, 80s and 90s) and how successful businesses market their brands in today's hyper-connected environment.

Following is an excerpt of a post I wrote for the SWEAT EQUITY blog:

Firstly, I really enjoyed the book. More...

Internal Enterprise Communities - Your Time Has Come!

by Vanessa DiMauro of Leader Networks

Intranets, or what some call enterprise communities, are getting the short end of the social media stick- they offer all the great benefits of knowledge-based collaboration and enables an organization to leverage its finest assets - its people. A success corporate intranet can yield a stronger, more powerful and productive work environment and enable peers to collaborate and co-create for the benefit of the company. A successful intranet is the demarcation of a company that is well poised to succeed strategically long-term. More...

Is the term Social Media holding you back?

by David Meerman Scott of David Meerman Scott

When I tweeted this today, I got a bunch of reactions, so I decided to expand on the idea in this post:

In many companies the term "Social Media" has a negative connotation so I use "Real-Time Media" instead and management pays attention.

As I travel the world talking about marketing strategies, I'm hearing from many people that there is strong pushback from management about "social media."

The bosses say that social media is frivolous. They obsess about ROI. More...