The new head of Sun Microsystems, Jonathan Schwartz, will be the first Fortune 500 C.E.O. blogger. As C.O.O. of the company, he has used his blog as a powerful platform to groom Sun’s corporate brand with employees, analysts, developers, customers and other stakeholders. He is considered one of the most skillful executive bloggers, with a mix of self depreciating humor and stingy commentaries about competitors. His blog already attracts some 300,000 unique visitors a month, a number that will likely grow as he assumes the helm of Sun. In a recent Harvard Business Review article (Nov. 05), he forecasted that executive blogs are as inevitable as email:

For executives, having a blog is not going to be a matter of choice, any more than e-mail is today. If you’re not part of the conversation, others will speak on your behalf.

Stay tuned to how Schwartz will use this platform to engage in conversations, set the agenda and build the corporate Sun brand.

BMA (Business Marketing Association) sends out some great educational e-mail, but the one I just received made my stomach hurt. The inference was that we exist to supply the sales team with leads, and branding programs are just fluff. Here’s the quote:

The plain fact is that marketing teams who say they have a “metrics” problem really mean to say their marketing program isn’t generating sales leads. In the real world, this comes from running fluffy, branding-oriented marketing programs that don’t make a compelling case for the product to its prospect, and running these programs too long eventually causes the company’s sales team to complain that marketing programs aren’t generating sales leads for them.

Yes, lead generation is critical. But I’d like to see the sales team sell when their prospects have no clue about their company, their offering, their brand. And while it’s very difficult to demonstrate ROI on brand-building communications, there are metrics that apply. We need both lead-generation and brand-building communications in a healthy marketing mix.

But gads, is this quote heresy or what?

When one thinks IABC one thinks (i) international and (ii) measurement. Both are evident in what is probably IABC’s most prestigious program — the Gold Quill awards (though as a former Gold Quill chair, I may be biased; colleagues from the accredition council are welcome to disagree). At the upcoming Vancouver conference, IABC will recognize outstanding communicators from around the world (international) whose work all includes goals, objectives, strategy and evaluation (i.e., measurement) — not to mention some outstanding creative!