Marsteller Adds Consumer-Generated Media Services

Marsteller has rolled out a “Digital Check-up” service for clients, providing a snapshot of their efforts and positioning in the consumer-generated media space.

“This grew out of a discussion with clients who were tired of having to purchase a new service every time a new digital ‘flavor of the month’ came out,” Andrew Nibley, chairman of Marsteller, told ClickZ News. “They want to know what’s important, how it all fits together, and how they can use it to produce business results.” Marsteller is the full-service advertising, design, interactive and production agency of WPP Group’s PR giant Burson-Marsteller.

The service starts with Marsteller’s own Digital Check-up, which provides a report card detailing what kind of a presence the client has in various online efforts and consumer-generated media. Assessment areas include corporate Web site audits, blog influence tracking and evaluation, search engine optimization, message monitoring, word-of-mouth/viral marketing, and “e-fluentials” online influencer targeting.

Once the client has an idea of what areas they need to address, Marsteller will recommend solutions from four partners who provide tools to create and monitor what it’s calling “user-generated media.” It’s calling the group the User-Generated Media Alliance (UGMA).

Services include buzz marketing measurement from Intelliseek; word-of-mouth campaign development from BzzAgent; Search engine strategy and optimization from Converseon; and conversational character, or avatar marketing campaign creation, from Oddcast.

“As we went through the checklist, we found that we were good at providing many of the services ourselves, but that we weren’t experts in all areas. That’s when we decided to act as a sort of general contractor, and call in specialists for certain areas as clients need them,” Nibley said.

Similar initiatives have been launched this year by PR agencies like CooperKatz, Omnicom’s Ketchum, and Interpublic’s MWW Group.