Carat Makes Blog Entry, Offers New Practice

Online ad agency Carat Interactive today is expected to launch a new practice for clients interested in employing blogs as a marketing tool. John Cate, vice president and national media director for Carat Interactive, said clients such as TiVo and Pfizer will each be given a three-part blogging "starter kit," introducing them to the increasingly influential world of blogs.

The kits will instruct each client on how to effectively monitor blogs within their purview, advertise on appropriate blogs, and actually blog themselves. "This practice won't be right for all of our clients," said Cate. "We'll have to access the landscape, and determine who can sustain a dialogue and who can't."

How will Cate tell clients to respond to the inevitable negative feedback that such an open forum invites? "Factually incorrect statements should always be confronted and corrected, but, with regard to consumer opinion," said Cate, "part of the discovery process will be to gauge what a client's feedback threshold is."

Cate, however, did make it clear that clients would be told to restrict their blogging to "enthusiast" blogs. "Controversy is not a goal here. We want our clients to take part in a productive dialogue with serious, like-minded consumers that will be beneficial to both."

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