Give 'em credit (en francais)

A PR firm that embraces blogs and the social networking prospects. As a member of the Torch group blog I received the following email:

Hi,

I work for Thornley Fallis Communications in Ottawa.

We represent both Lockheed Martin and Alenia in Canada.

We work with Lockheed on the C-130J and with Alenia on the C-27J, promoting the respective aircraft for tactical airlift and fixed-wing SAR. We also support Lockheed on JSF.

I have been following your blog, The Torch, with great interest over the past few weeks, and have circulated the address to several people in the defence industry community.

The posts on airlift have obviously been of most interest to me and my colleagues -- they have generated some really informed and insightful discussion.

Should you have any questions or require additional information on the C-130J or C-27J, I would be happy to provide you with the same level of response that I would for 'mainstream' media.

You may find these two websites useful if you aren't already aware of them: www.c-130j.ca and www.c-27j.ca.

A quick look at the Thornley Fallis website reveals both a blog and a podcast. From a recent blog post, commenting on a firm member who is departing:

We’ll accept that this increased risk is just part of the entry fee to engage in social media. And we’ll understand that it’s better to spend a year learning and exploring with a guy like David Jones than it is to spend a decade of the safe same old, same old practise of techniques we long ago mastered.

For PR consultancies, it’s grow or die. And we must learn to grow. We will learn to deal with this aspect of blogging.

On Corporate Blogging:

So, a company wants to influence the views of opinion-leading bloggers. That’s a legitimate objective.

And emailing information directly to opinion leaders is an effective way to get it in front of them. They might not see it on your own blog. But, that brings us back to the big but: true transparency requires that you should be prepared to publish for all to see anything you’re prepared to send to a selected blogger. And to be able to do this in the blogosphere requires that you have your own blog. A place where you can post your point of view, your information, for all to see.

A savvy firm not afraid to embrace a new and changing landscape.

For anyone who's wondering, the email has encouraged me to look more closely at this issue and most likely blog on it in the future.