Lame corporate blogs

I like the idea of corporate blogs, they're so the reverse of normal marketing communications, where anything slightly controversial or opinionated is usually squeezed out prior to publication.

When done right, like Macromedia's or Jonathan Schwartz's Weblog, or Robert Scoble's, corporate blogging works. When done by the status quo crew of ad agencies, marcomm experts, and legal review, they are, in the words of Halle Berry, "a piece of shit."

Here are two examples: one a so-called "viral marketing campaign" using fake blogs and bloggers to extol the wonders of MSN Search put together by a Microsoft ad agency. The other, not as obnoxiously sleazy, but a perfect example of the sort of Bizarro World blog you get when you're blogging by marcomm committee and review/approval cycles is the extremely boring Google corporate blog. Even a Google blogger thinks it's bad...

It's a surprising mis-representation - the culture we work in is fast, decisive, and colloquial but the blog voice is stiff. It's your not-so-cool uncle unbuttoning his shirt, listening to The Postal Service (but only the single of Such Great Heights) and proclaiming that Yeah, I totally dig your stuff you kids, this hip-hop speaks to me too. Um. Dogg. *flashes hang ten sign*.

(via John Batelle's SearchBlog)