In preparation for launching this site officially, we've been discussing whether to share our thinking at large, as opposed to keeping our counsel and not blogging in public.

In case anyone makes the case that we shouldn’t be having conversations in public, our own Joanna Peña Bickley offers this:

there are no secrets... It’s all out there anyways. The point to make is that we should be architecting the conversation. As long as we do not say something we allow others to shape our story and image.
Most agencies have 2 or 3 blogs. We only need one.

Which agencies? Well, here’s a selection:

• http://threeminds.organic.com/ (Three Minds) - part of Organic, an Omnicom shop
• http://www.digitaldesignblog.com/ and http://www.theworkplaceblog.com/ (Avenue A/Razorfish)
• http://digitalhive.blogs.com/digiblog/ (“Insights and Ideas from the Account Planning group at Digitas”)
• http://www.theinteractive.co.uk/ (Edelman Interactive UK – currently closed for maintenance. Edelman is an independent shop)
• http://experiencematters.criticalmass.com/ and http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/ (Critical Mass – I think these guys are Omnicom)
• http://cmorants.com/ (Sapient)

Here’s a a comment from
http://experiencecurve.com/

Hey Karl, thank you for your post and for everyone’s follow-up remarks. Your critique of Avenue A | Razorfish’s blogging approach is well taken. At Avenue A | Razorfish, we employ agency-wide blogs like the Digital Design Blog (http://www.digitaldesignblog.com) and The Workplace Blog (http://www.theworkplaceblog.com/) for members of a particular community of interest to share news, commentary, and thought leadership in a more immediate and interactive way. For example, we used our Digital Design Blog to publish a significant piece of thought leadership, “Fast Forward: Designing for Constant Change” (http://www.digitaldesignblog.com/?p=84). Of course, doing so made it possible for readers to have a conversation with us by asking questions, pushing back, or simply commenting on the report. Moreover – and this is key — the Digital Design Blog is a forum for user experience professionals who might lack the time or inclination to manage individual employee blogs. But on the other hand, our people do blog as individuals, especially in cases where someone is an acknowledged authority on a particular topic (and is willing to invest time in blogging regularly with a useful point of view). For instance, David Baker, head of our Email Solutions practice, blogs regularly on the Email Insider Blog (http://blogs.mediapost.com/email_insider/?author=3), and Reo Watanabe, CEO of Dentsu | Avenue A | Razorfish in Japan, maintains his own Reo blog (http://www.dentsu-aarf.com/reo/). But, the bottom line is that we appreciate your comments on how we can inject more personality into our community blogs. This is a great discussion.

And here’s an experienced blogger’s take on a particular blog – included to show some points of value we should be aware of:

All the authors are identified, author headshots on every post, down to earth writing style and you don’t feel like your being pitched every other post.

And finally, just today, Rob Webber sends this:

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/pontin/21891/

Apparently, Japanese businesses (up to and including Sony) use blogging extensively as a regular business communications tool.