So how do you make corporate cool?
Mark Drapeau, who works for Microsoft in D.C., thinks he’s got the answer. Drapeau invited swaths of young Washington to the Georgetown club L2 Tuesday night to debut Publicyte, Microsoft’s new online publication, of which he is editor-in-chief.
“Microsoft technically owns Publicyte, it’s a straight up Microsoft website, but the spirit of Publicyte is to not be a corporate marketing campaign and not be a typical blog,” he explained. “It’s to seem like a private company that’s running a magazine that’s heavily, heavily sponsored by Microsoft.”
While some of the writers will be straight up Microsoft, prominent Washingtonians are also on the list. One is Katherine Kennedy, who appeared on the D.C.-based reality TV show “Blonde Charity Mafia.” (Which only saw the light of day outside the United States.) Kennedy’s first piece examines how the Washington Humane Society’s Fashion for Paws annual fashion show uses innovative branding strategies to bring in big bucks for the non-profit.
Drapeau has some pretty lofty goals for the website, ticking off several big names in journalism as models. “I…think a lot of about Slate, for example. Slate is digital only, they are very contrarian, they write long thoughtful things,” he said. “And Vanity Fair is also to some degree a model, they talk about the people behind the stories.”
