This weekend I received a LinkedIn query from an alumni group I belong to asking if anyone wanted some freelance work ghost blogging for some executives. The more I thought about it, the less annoyed I was at the concept.
Then I found this well argued post by Mark Schaefer about other corporate ghost writing examples and all my reservations faded.
“The chairman does not pen his own speech, yet nobody questions that they own it. They don’t write the shareholder’s letter in the annual report, yet this is deemed as authentic. Do you think Former GE Chairman Jack Welch sat there and pecked out his own book? And yet it is seen as his.”
Well I’ll be darned. Maybe i did some good : )
Thanks David!
Fascinating debate in the comments. Maybe the public would value writers more (though, sadly, never as highly as CEOs) if all the ghosting was openly acknowledged. I don’t know why this should be any different from TV writing; no one thinks Jon Stewart or Conan writes all his own jokes, do they?
That argument seems to have a Pink Floyd song in it somewhere struggling to get out…
Corporate blogging is more and more a PR endeavor. Of course we can blog in the name of the VP, if he/she approves.
Of course, this leads onto the idea of perhaps creating a Virtual VP. A concocted face and story behind which our PR teams pull the strings.
Hey, it was inevitable that most social marketing/media would flow under the control of PR — they are they one group in most corporations best suited to feed the maw with words and sounds and pictures. The other function would be customer service — but that is less about content and more about calming pissed off people down.
Virtual VPs — everyone, flaks, press, even the execs themselves know most corporate communications is more processed than Cheez-Whiz and about as substantial. So give into it and let the flacks become social ghosts.
Social also works really well for political rumor mongering. No requirement to back up whatever scurrilous charge you care to throw out.
“Everyone, flaks, press, even the execs themselves know most corporate communications is more processed than Cheez-Whiz and about as substantial.”
You remind me of what Barack Obama once said about Joe Biden — prone to rhetorical flourishes.