"Blogging isn't serious marketing."

A friend of mine told me something like that the other night.

Whew, glad to hear that. I'd hate to have to be serious all the time. Or wear a suit. You know all those "serious marketers" have to wear suits, right? They can't smile either. Who wants to be serious?

I guess if I were selling ERP, CRM, or something like that, then I'd try to be serious too.

Oh, wait, there's a blogger that's writing about ERP. Damn, there went that theory. Next we'll see enterprise blogs. Oh, yes, I already know about the Oracle blogs.

Anyway, tonight I was at the book launch party for "the Marketing Playbook" hosted by the authors, John Zagula and Rich Tong.

So, while I was munching on goodies in Rich's house tonight, I asked Rich and John for their thoughts on marketing and whether blogging should play any part.

I expected these guys to say "blogging isn't serious marketing."

But, they shocked me and said that every product and every company should have a blog.

These are no upstart marketers, either. Rich used to work at Microsoft as VP of Marketing and Business Development for Windows, Office, and BackOffice. He was there for 12 years. Translation: he was behind many of Microsoft's most successful products during the years when their growth was exploding.

"Blogging is serious marketing," John told me. He said that the companies he's working with at Ignition take what bloggers are doing very seriously.

He said a lot of other stuff too and was so interesting that I stopped him and said "can we do an interview this weekend?" So, come back for more from the bleeding edge of marketing thinkers.

Rich is a general partner and founder of Ignition Partners, a venture capital firm. John is also a partner at Ignition and invests in enterprise software and services.

Wait a second, enterprise VCs saying that blogging is "serious marketing?" Hmmm.

I guess I'm gonna have to start wearing a suit when I blog if it gets any more serious in here. I'm off to Gaping Void and Bernie DeKoven's Funlog for an antidote to all this seriousness.

I should give John and Rich a serious plug for their book. I will do that soon. In the meantime, here's a non-serious plug. It's good stuff. It sure helped me talk to Microsoft's marketing department. :-)

Anyway, I gotta go read feeds for a while. It's serious business now. Geez.