Digital Recruiting

"The ultimate phone is here" - follow up thoughts

Dear me - where did that last month go?!

Anyway - it was my intention that after posting the original article to follow it up quite quickly with my thoughts on it as a marketing piece, then I looked around and it was Mid August. For anyone who can't be bothered to click through to that original post here's the video:

Matt commented: "I'm all for a bit of stealth marketing and this is certainly entertaining but I really don't think it pulls it off. A phone that has everything and Nova Scotia.....I can't really see any kind of link that would make the humour and the surprise reveal resonate in an effective way "

And I agree - it's indeed a clever and entertaining piece, and I agree that if you look deep there's no perceptible resonance between what's being sold and the execution. But my biggest frustration/disappointment with it as a marketing piece is more in the top level execution than the deeper resonance of message and brand, something more fundamental - and it's pretty much the same thing that was the biggest failing of the viral execution of what I still think is probably the best recruitment specific viral I've seen to date (seemingly a no show at any awards :(  - the BS Recruitment Solutions piece from Zurich.

Here again we see the execution getting lost up its own channel of creativity. I mean you REALLY have to want to find out what this is about to work out where you need to click through to find out where this has really come from. I suggest that, even more these days than ever before (due to the wealth and richness of distraction available online), people are lightening quick to move. Quirky's good. Entertaining's great. But once I get that this isn't a proper phone (or a real Recruitment Consultancy) and have got the general p**s taking concept that may indeed be amusing enough to forward on (or blog about), I'd argue that there's nothing here that's engaging enough to encourage me to seek out and dig further to find out what's really behind this all. I can observe and move on without ever "getting" the real message.

It's wonderful to have a budget to be creative - but at the end of the day it's about the conversion. So whilst it might "spoil the impact" or "ruin the flow" I'd argue strongly that you either need to make it all the more engaging (and I mean actual engagement - not just viewing and clicking engagement) or else have a clear button much earlier on in the viral experience that screams "Of course there's no such phone - but there is a better place - find out more - go on, you know you want to!!!"

If you use up the viewers attention span with your creativity, if you satiate their curiosity through your wit and delivery before it's clear who you are and/or what you're selling, then to hell with how many times people pass it on or how slick it looks - YOU FAIL!

Social network sites lose ‘cool’ image.

Here we go again. The FT delivered an article with the above headline this morning.  I know this, because I was just given a scanned copy by a colleague.

And once again, a big headline with pretty much a nothing story behind it.

Basically, it’s saying that the proportion of 15-24 years olds with a profile on Facebook fell for the first time last year from 55% to 50%, according to the communications regulator (no doubt a spotty teenager they thought they’d ask who was walking by the office). 

I think the key word in this statement is ‘proportion’, because actually, the site (or the medium itself, if we’re going to be fussy here) has become no less popular, but when you read on (in the same article), it continues by backing up the grand claim made in the headline by stating that ‘the number of 25-34 year olds claiming to have a social networking profile grew by 6%, and among 35-54 year olds, it grew by 8%’.  Clearly, that makes the world of Social Networking totally uncool.

So to me, logic dictates that, as more and more people discover the range of options available, finding one that delivers for them, and set up their profile, the ‘proportion’ of a sites overall 15—24 years old – the earlier adopters – will decrease.  Nothing more sinister.  It’s just common sense.

Oh, and then they go on to say – and I quote – ‘The findings are likely to attract the attention of media financiers, whose assumptions of media usage were shattered three weeks ago when the 15 year old Morgan Stanley intern Matthew Robson claimed that teenagers did not use the much hyped microblogging service Twitter’.

To all the ‘media financiers’ that are worrying, have no fear.  I have tried to help out here by undertaking my own research.  Don’t worry, I have applied the now tried and tested ‘research criteria’ that appears to be totally acceptable for the National Press to use as a solid basis for comment when discussing the emerging Social Networking arena – I have asked someone their opinion.

I decided not to waste my time with a ‘focus group’ or any form of ‘old fashioned’ qualitative or quantitative research, as it’s quite clear that the future success of any platform in this space can be determined by the opinion of one person, and so here goes with my findings.

What a crock of Sh1t.

To Maija Palmer, the ‘Technology Correspondent’ who wrote the piece, why don’t you stop wasting your time and (expensive) space writing such inconclusive rubbish, and instead carry out some meaningful research. Or just do something else.

Man, this sort of over-dramatic, underwhelming reporting gets on my thrippenies. 

Harumph.

P.S. To help further explain the validity of this research, I asked a rather 'un-cool' 37 year old chubby bloke I know for his input – me.  That should do it.