New Corporate Blogger is Born

A few weeks ago, with the gorgeous Olympic Mountains as a backdrop, I was sitting in a meeting with my client, RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser, along with Bill Hankes, the company’s VP of Corp Comms. We were talking about Social Media; about the need for engagement; about our progress to-date.

I pointed to the launch of RealPlayer11 as an example of a “pretty good” success. RP11 launched last year with supercool features like the ability to download DRM-free videos in virtually any format to your hard-drive, i.e., you could build your own YouTube library. RP11 was also free of the old bloatware and upsell pop-ups that plagued earlier, flawed versions of the videoplayer.

But, those previous versions of RP had burned a lot of bridges with online consumers. Although the coverage by bloggers and mainstream writers was generally positive, the subsequent comments by end-users were invariably bitter. One commenter went so far as to suggest that “Every time you launch RealPlayer, God kills a kitten.” (And worse, if you can believe that.) Harsh!

But, we’d seen it coming. Although never as promptly nor as broadly as we would have liked, we did do our best to ensure that the RP11 product manager responded to those posts (with sincere mea culpas for past indiscretions). We also encouraged him to start-up his own temporary RealPlayer Blog to candidly address complaints.

Glaser agreed that our RP11 effort had been as successful as possible, given that our spokesman had been nominally available to help us out. “How do we do better over time?” he asked.

At this point I made my pitch for a full-time Community Relations position. The last year had been an exciting one for Real in terms of rehabbing its reputation through better offerings (including today’s news of the Rhapsody MP3 store), but, by taking a largely top-down, mainstream-media focused approach, the Company would never experience the groundswell of consumer support it needed to truly thrive. (I should note that this pitch had the full and enthusiastic support of the VP of Corp Comms!)

To his credit, Glaser didn’t even blink. “Do it,” he said, automagically funding fresh headcount for the Corp Comms group. “Write-up the job description and make it happen. Just make sure you hire the right person.”

I grabbed Bill’s arm and scurried out of there before Glaser could change his mind. I knew exactly who they should hire for this newly-minted role.

So let me introduce you to Lacy Kemp. She’s held a variety of roles at RealNetworks, from admin to media producer. I got to know her when she was Bill Hankes’s assistant. Lacy was far from typical: she was edgy, funny, savvy, smart, engaged. She quickly made her mark within Real; she was well-known and universally applauded. She maintains a personal blog but is just getting started with Real’s “official” blog and Twitter account.

We’re just now getting Lacy set up with professional monitoring tools, a reading list, a Flipcam, etc. It’s premature to expect immediate changes on Lacy’s watch, especially at such a large company – but for my part, I am enthused to know that someone as approachable and cool as Lacy Kemp will be a new, public face. For Real.

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