Thursday, June 22nd, 2006
British corporate/brand blogs
What are the big name corporate and brand blogs in the UK? The New Pr Wiki - an invaluable resource for anyone into business blogging - has a list of CEO/leadership and corporate blogs, which I have shamelessly reproduced below. But are Thomson and Guiness really the only big brands blogging in the UK? Surely there must be more than that?
UPDATE: Have added more to the list, and slightly rearranged things so we have business blogs, whether by individuals, and whether branded or not, and official household name consumer-facing blogs. Are there any more of the latter?
2nd UPDATE: Added even more, and have been pointed at this BritBlogs category by Stuart Bruce. I am not going to sift through it for additions, because I’m not sure that’s going to actually achieve my aim. I’ll admit, I was hoping to see more household names.
British business blogs
Matt O’Neill, Activ Media
David Rossiter, Analyst Insight
Andy Hayler, Kalido
David Terrar, Managing Director, D Squared C
Conchango
David Ferrabee, Hill & Knowlton
Joel Cere, Hill & Knowlton
Niall Cook, Hill and Knowlton
Sally Costerton, Hill & Knowlton
Richard Charkin, Chief Executive, Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
Chris Lewis, CEO, LEWIS PR
Jon Silk, LEWIS PR
Ellee SeymourProActive PR
Richard Gaunt and Glenn O’Neil, Benchpoint
Interactive PR (not sure if this is a business or a group of like-minded individuals)
James Warren, director of web relations, Weber Shandwick
Mark Shanahan, Leapfrog Corporate Communications
David Phillips, ManagementClarity
Michael Blowers, Media Evaluation Research
Andrew Brown, Mediaklik
Andrew B. Smith, Object Marketing
Antony Mayfield, Harvard Public Relations UK
Rainier PR Breakfast Bulletin
Justin Hayward, MS&L
Simon Collister
Alan Moore, Managing Director, SMLXL
Melanie Surplice, Factiva
Softalk
David Tebbutt, Managing Director, Brainstorm Software
DrKW Telco Tech
Drew Benvie, LEWIS PR
David Davis, PR consultant (is that a business blog?)
Audacious Communications
Adrian Cronin-Lukas, Director, Big Blog Company
Custom Communication
Blog Relations and The Angel Blog
Mark Borkowski
Paul Woodhouse, The Tinbasher
Modern Marketing
JP Rangaswami, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, UK
“Consult The Guru PR & Marketing Blog
Dan Leach Dot Com
Edelman UK
Thomas Mahon, English Cut
Dave Jennings, CEO, Envigour Systems Ltd.
Headshift
LEWIS PR - LEWIS 360°
Logicalware
Mark Rogers, CEO, Market Sentinel
Net Resources
Net Resources
Stephen Davies
Stephen Newton, Public Relations Consultant
Public Relations Online
Stephen Waddington, managing director of Rainier PR
Neil MacLean, Reputation Plus
Simon Waldman, Director of Digital Publishing, Guardian Newspapers
David Upton, Director, Stirling Reid Limited
Stuart Bruce, Founder, Bruce Marshall Associates LLP
Jackie Danicki, Engagement Alliance
Baukejan and Vanessa
Eie Flud
Score Communications
Real Oasis
CheapFlights
NuBricks
British* household name consumer-facing blogs
Thomson Holidays
The Guinness Blog
Glenfiddich
The Observer**
I’m on the hunt for more British business blogs - of all types - so please add suggestions in the comments!
* OK, English, Irish, Welsh and Scottish… not that I want to split hairs, frankly.
** Note, I didn’t include the Guardian blogs because they are subject focused, whereas The Observer blog is about The Observer… or at least, it was the last time I looked.
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June 22nd, 2006 at 3:14 pm
Hi Suw, I’m blogging about our product at http://www.mediaklik.wordpress.com whether it’s a business blog I’ll let you be the judge.
June 23rd, 2006 at 8:27 am
Stormhoek, surely?
I think most big brands are still too scared.
June 23rd, 2006 at 8:47 am
Stormhoek’s not British though - they are South African. I’m specifically intersted in British (or Great British if I’m going to include Ireland) business and brand blogs.
June 23rd, 2006 at 11:50 am
Sorry - I was going on your question: “What are the big name corporate and brand blogs in the UK?”
Stormhoek is definitely one of these.
Depending on what you’re trying to achieve, you might want to think more about what brand blogs people in the UK are exposed to rather than just the publishing location.
N
June 23rd, 2006 at 1:40 pm
Suw, I created an OPML file with all the blogs you listed, and I added another couple of blogs by PR/Communication consultans:
- you can import the OPML file:
http://hosting.opml.org/basturea/uk-business-blogs.opml
- you can browse it in Grazr:
http://tinyurl.com/jvezv
- you can use Grazr to add it to your post:
http://grazr.com/config.html
Please feel free to copy the OPML file and change it.
And thank you for using the New PR Wiki!
PS: The authors of “Interactive PR” - Paul Bradshaw and Caroline Wilson - are lecturers at UCE Birmingham. (The blog is not included in the OPML file.)
June 24th, 2006 at 8:23 am
Q. What are the big name corporate and brand blogs in the UK?
A. We’ve no idea and with the exception of technology or media companies we think it will probably be 12 – 18 months before more companies operating outside of these fields catch on.
The assumption we feel for large corporates is something like this “we spend a fortune on maintaining a large website that has all the corporate data we want to produce, so why blog… …let’s face it if blogging was useful then everyone would be doing it…”
Also blogging is still “new” and therefore has a certain amateur status.
Q. …Are there any more of the latter?
A. We like to think that our blog http://www.realoasis.net is, whilst we are not even going to attempt a corporate approach the hits are 60,000 + a week and climbing (which whilst not huge figures, the market for garden design & landscaping which is pretty small). The blog also ranks very well in the search engines, so we’ve used it to gain leverage and exposure. In the autumn we’ll ease off and spend some time restructuring the main website. The intension is to integrate the blog as part of the news section.
June 25th, 2006 at 10:36 pm
IT consultancy Conchango has blogs at http://blogs.conchango.com/
Thoughtworks (US based, with a UK office) has blogs at http://blogs.thoughtworks.com/
June 26th, 2006 at 10:17 am
Thank you for the useful list. Another name: Andy Hayler of Kalido blogs about Enterprise software at andyhayler.blogspot.com
June 27th, 2006 at 10:44 am
Thank you for the mention - I am very small - but am a British business blog - with as many downs as ups - we like to be open and honest with our customers and there truly is no better way than blogging regularly to achieve that.
Heather
June 27th, 2006 at 10:49 am
Thank you for the mention - I am very small - but am a British business blog - with as many downs as ups - we like to be open and honest with our customers and there truly is no better way than blogging regularly to achieve that.
Heather
June 29th, 2006 at 9:36 am
Dear Suw,
We write a New Homes Blog and are based in the UK at http://www.nubricks.com
We blog about specific new homes and guides, articles and tips on this subject.
We are not a big company as yet and are now looking into our brand.
Thanks,
Adam
July 1st, 2006 at 1:42 pm
My non-profit company, Engagement Alliance, has a blog at engagementalliance.com; I am the company’s director, and have an eponymous blog.
July 1st, 2006 at 7:56 pm
You’re already on the list, Jackie.
July 7th, 2006 at 12:13 pm
Our blog has been a key part of our marketing since launching - it’s helped establish our credentials and evidence our thinking. Its hard to understand why agencies wouldn’t blog.
http://www.bigpictureadvertising.co.uk/
Couple of other good ones;
http://wklondon.typepad.com/welcome_to_optimism/
http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/
July 7th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
In addition to external facing blogs, it’ll be interesting to see how large organisations use the social media for internal communications purposes!
It’s particularly interesting to me personally as that’s where i’m finding the new revenue streams are coming from. Was lucky enough to get a ‘paid experiment’ with the British Council back in April covering one of their project events (http://activate.typepad.com/reachout). That lesson taught me there’s potential in offering a ‘managed service’ for specific applications.
Yes, the barriers to entry with blogging are low (technically), but as it matures as a medium for organisations, will in-house teams need support in whatever form that takes? I suspect so.
All the best,
Matt
July 7th, 2006 at 7:26 pm
Hi Sue,
I’m a web copywriter whose recently moved into concentrating on developing business blogs in the Milton Keynes area. I should have some new business blogs going up soon, but my own blog is all about it. Its only got a few posts so far but I will be updating it once a week.
http://thewritewords.me.uk/blog/
Thanks and regards,
Matt.
July 8th, 2006 at 8:25 pm
this is a bit like asking in 1994/5 which companies, UK or otherwise, have a website. Once anything, blogsite or whatever becomes more accepted more companies will have them as consumers get to expect them. Right now its just too early a point to raise.
August 29th, 2006 at 3:48 pm
A small company but we are blogging ! The Engaging Brand is a mixture of PR, Communications, HR and technology…..and issue a weekly podcast http://www.podcastfm.co.uk/about.php?id=54
March 15th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Dear Suw,
Could you update the blog address you have for me to:
http://beyondpr.blogspot.com
Thank you very much
Joel Cere
June 21st, 2007 at 11:01 am
Hi Suw, I blog on business planning and entreprenuership in the UK at http://bplans.typepad.com/uk/
regards
Alan