I've got a new job

I'm extremely pleased to announce that I'll be Managing Director of Blue State Digital in London, starting on 12th October.

Here's the press release announcing it:

Blue State Digital London Appoints Rob Blackie as Managing Director

London – Blue State Digital, Inc. (BSD) has appointed Rob Blackie as Managing Director of their London office. In his new role, Blackie will be providing leadership to the agency’s growing UK-based operations and assume responsibility for BSD’s continued expansion in the European markets.

Blue State Digital, which was acquired by WPP Digital in 2010, is known best for its work on U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. Founded in 2004, the firm has achieved strong growth by successfully applying digital organising and advocacy strategies to the commercial, NGO and public sectors.

BSD’s client roster includes American Express, Ford Motor Company, Microsoft, Recylebank, and dozens of the world’s leading non-profits including the Red Cross, United Way Worldwide, and the Sundance Institute. The firm also works with political candidates and parties around the world.

Commenting on his appointment, Rob Blackie said:

“BSD-London does brilliant work with clients like the Tate, Hope Not Hate and the music matters campaign for the BPI, among many others. There’s great potential for BSD to gain recognition for this work, and to grow our client base across non-profits, government and corporates.”

Blackie comes to BSD from Blue Rubicon, which he joined in 2005 with a background in traditional media relations, and was Blue Rubicon’s founding Head of Digital from 2007.

Blue Rubicon’s digital work now covers almost all client accounts, from Facebook’s multi-award winning Democracy UK campaign to McDonald’s. Under Blackie’s guidance, Blue Rubicon was shortlisted for 13 digital awards in the past year alone.

BSD Managing Partner Thomas Gensemer said:

“Rob will be an incredible asset for Blue State Digital. We’ve seen his proven ability to introduce online communications for a broad spectrum of clients, and we’re excited to bring his knowledge, and tremendous business intuition into the fold. We know his experience will be instrumental in BSD’s continued success in Europe.”

About Rob Blackie 
Prior to joining BSD, Rob Blackie was Head of Digital at Blue Rubicon. He has a background in traditional media relations and has headed Blue Rubicon’s digital team since its formation in 2007. He advised a wide range of corporate and public clients—from large-scale government campaigns to Facebook and McDonald's —on integrating online and offline communications. Prior to joining Blue Rubicon, Rob played a large role in advising the central government Directors of Communications on the integration of digital into press office communications, and trained more than 500 government communicators on how best to implement these practices.

About Blue State Digital

Blue State Digital (BSD) is a full-service agency that provides integrated digital marketing strategy as well as a Web-based licensed software platform to help organizations drive concrete results by building communities online. BSD provides clients with a variety of strategic services, including program development and management, mass email strategy and execution, website design, content development, video and motion graphics, offline PR and social media outreach, analytics and online advertising. In addition, the BSD Online Tools, the company’s licensed software toolset, offers organizations of any size a core CRM/CMS technology platform for community-building and other advocacy initiatives. BSD has offices in New York, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Boston and London.

BSD is part of the WPP plc, one of the world's largest communications services organizations (NASDAQ: WPPGY, www.wpp.com). For more information, visitwww.bluestatedigital.com and www.bsdtools.com.

Help. I've become a swear word

I have a slightly unusual surname. Not wildly so, but Blackie isn't like Smith. Our numbers are in the thousands though.

And like everyone else I occasionally have my emails go into people's junk mail folders.

Well I'm mildly distressed to see that my name is considered a profanity by a leading provider of online moderation tools.

This means that if I comment on Facebook pages or some websites and mention my surname then I'll be automatically put into a moderation queue, and disappear from websites. And it might explain some of my emails disappearing.

This feels like the first step on the slippery slope to being airbrushed out of history.

Still as my colleague Karin Robinson points out, Olympic gold medal gymnast Mitch Gaylord must have it much worse.