Digital Recruiting

If Architects Had to Work Like Web Designers

I came across (well - was pointed to it from twitter) this fantastic piece. I'm sorry to say it struck soooo many chords with me, but at the same time the satisfaction I got from reading someone else conveying a pain and frustration I've all too often felt compelled me to copy and paste it here for our 4 readers to enjoy too (hoping that at least one of them was involved in website project conception -> delivery).

You can read the original here on DigitalSurvivors.com

enjoy :)

If Architects Had to Work Like Web Designers 

Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.

Keep in mind that the house I ultimately choose must cost less than the one I am currently living in. Make sure, however, that you correct all the deficiencies that exist in my current house (the floor of my kitchen vibrates when I walk across it, and the walls don't have nearly enough insulation in them).

As you design, also keep in mind that I want to keep yearly maintenance costs as low as possible. This should mean the incorporation of extra-cost features like aluminum, vinyl, or composite siding. (If you choose not to specify aluminum, be prepared to explain your decision in detail.)

Please take care that modern design practices and the latest materials are used in construction of the house, as I want it to be a showplace for the most up-to-date ideas and methods. Be alerted, however, that kitchen should be designed to accommodate, among other things, my 1952 Gibson refrigerator.

To insure that you are building the correct house for our entire family, make certain that you contact each of our children, and also our in-laws. My mother-in-law will have very strong feelings about how the house should be designed, since she visits us at least once a year.

Make sure that you weigh all of these options carefully and come to the right decision. I, however, retain the right to overrule any choices that you make.

Please don't bother me with small details right now. Your job is to develop the overall plans for the house: Get the big picture. At this time, for example, it is not appropriate to be choosing the color of the carpet. However, keep in mind that my wife likes blue.

Also, do not worry at this time about acquiring the resources to build the house itself. Your first priority is to develop detailed plans and specifications. Once I approve these plans, however, I would expect the house to be under roof within 48 hours.

While you are designing this house specifically for me, keep in mind that sooner or later I will have to sell it to someone else. It therefore should have appeal to a wide variety of potential buyers.

Please make sure before you finalize the plans that there is a consensus of the population in my area that they like the features this house has. I advise you to run up and look at my neighbor's house that he constructed last year. We like it a great deal. It has many features that we would also like in our new home, particularly the 75-foot swimming pool. With careful engineering, I believe that you can design this into our new house without impacting the final cost.

Please prepare a complete set of blueprints. It is not necessary at this time to do the real design, since they will be used only for construction bids. Be advised, however, that you will be held accountable for any increase of construction costs as a result of later design changes.

You must be thrilled to be working on as an interesting project as this! To be able to use the latest techniques and materials and to be given such freedom in your designs is something that can't happen very often.

Contact me as soon as possible with your complete ideas and plans.

PS: My wife has just told me that she disagrees with many of the instructions I've given you in this letter. As architect, it is your responsibility to resolve these differences. I have tried in the past and have been unable to accomplish this. If you can't handle this responsibility, I will have to find another architect.

PPS: Perhaps what I need is not a house at all, but a travel trailer. Please advise me as soon as possible if this is the case.

THEO PAPHITIS: Millionaire, Dragon, rubbish employer, hypocrite & Social Media dufus

Last week I read an article from the Daily Mail (a link I followed I don’t hesitate to add) from the inimitable Theo Paphitis entitled “Why ALL bosses should copy me and ban Facebook from the workplace”. I think it’s fair to say that it wound me up. REALLY wound me up. It's true that many articles I happen across from that "journalistic (and I use the expression in it’s loosest sense) stable" do, and that why I try to give it a wide berth – but this one got me fired. His key points were:

1. the internet is responsible for “an orgy of self-indulgence and exhibitionism”.
2. Ryman stopped all time-wasting by imposing a “non-draconian” ban on ALL websites that couldn’t be justified as useful for work.
3. The internet has undermined dialogue in so many ways.
4. Online socialising (unchecked) could cause the end of the world – or something like that.

And just in case you were unaware of what sparked this typically Daily Mail one eyed opinion venting by Mr Paphitis, it was the news that Portsmouth City Council had carte blanche banned facebook after discovering that their staff were “wasting” on average 400 hours on the site every month (PTod article here).

Now never ones to let the facts get in the way of a good sensationalist headline, or indeed the sum total of a Daily Mail story, you don’t have to look too hard in other press to see that this actually equates to just 5-6minutes a month PER staff member. But more on that later.

- The Internet is responsible for “an orgy of self-indulgence and exhibitionism”

This was one of the most reprehensible elements of the article for me – mainly because of its un-abashed hypocrisy from someone who profits from participating in a programme that is itself a platform that encourages this very "self-indulgence and exhibitionism".

The Internet elements collectively termed as social media simply provide a more accessible and inclusive window for and onto social interaction for those that are willing to do so electronically. Some people do, I’m sure, delude themselves that this channel for communication (or "egomaniacal drivel" as Mr Paphitis prefers to tar it all as) is the route to fame and success – but I’m sure most people using it (other than those already anointed “celebs” by whatever media powers that decide such things) actually see it for what it is: a way to stay in touch with a social &/or professional circle(s), potentially expanding your horizons and perspective along the way, sometimes to business or personal gain too, but most often it’s just about light hearted engagement.

And don’t even pretend to hide behind the “we’re a serious business programme giving people valuable business insight”. If that’s the case why is the programme the same week in week out, changing only the supporting cast of moron’s, the clinically deluded and the painfully naive, smattered, of course, with the odd sprinkling of genuine prospects? Because you profit directly from people’s hunger to get rich quicker and snatch their 15minutes of fame along the way.

- Ryman stopped all time-wasting by imposing a “non-draconian” ban on ALL websites that couldn’t be justified as useful for work.

So, if I understand this correctly, Theo felt that stopping EVERY website other than those that passed some “Paphitis management check list of suitability” was in some way “non-draconian” – as opposed to putting a block on a particular site/s which may have been discovered to be attracting too much of your employees attention. I clearly have no idea how you define “draconian” Theo – but might I suggest you check the dictionary, because I wouldn’t be surprised to find your staff referring to you as Theo “Draco” Paphitis.

And are you really that arrogant and / or ignorant to think that by putting a stop to what has appeared to you as a visible metric of “time wasting” you’ve done anything to address any time wasting propensity at all? I guess at least now your own staff are more likely to up the circulation of The Mail.

- The Internet has undermined dialogue in so many ways.

You state in your article that you are “never ceased to be amazed at the way people will email each other, even though their desks are only a few yards away” and that “Technological progress has brought linguistic regression”. I guess if you’re taking a very squinty eyed look at things over a short time lapse (very Daily Mail for sure) then it could seem like that, but what about appreciating the sheer volume and speed of interaction that modern communication technology enables and the fact that common human interaction protocols are also having to evolve as this advances?

Sending an email or text gives an instant, clear and auditable record of that engagement. Should it replace face-to-face dialogue (or even voice-to-voice)? It depends on the situation is the honest answer. And sure people get it wrong, but that’s who we are and what we learn from. So don’t give up on us just yet - when you started out I bet it was just phone and Royal Mail.

- Online socialising (unchecked) could cause the end of the world – or something like that.

“In the end, businesses and public services cannot survive if staff prefer to be socialising online rather than doing the job for which they are paid.” We’re talking 6 minutes per employee a month!!!! If you, Theo, or indeed anyone (even the most radical/crazed public sector union representative), can tell me convincingly whilst looking me straight in the eyes that the vast majority of council staff don’t lose more time on cigarette breaks, getting in late, sloping off early, having an extended lunch break, taking a personal call or 6, chatting over a photocopier or generally mopping up after other council incompetence in so many other ways – then you can have the deeds to my house!

Now I’m not going to go the other way and, for the sake of making a cheap point, pretend that every single Portsmouth Council employee has access to the Internet and a facebook account. But even if we assume just 10% of the workforce have that’s still not much over an hour a month – or 15-20 mins. a week.

Are some senior council officials and businessman / celebrity wanna-be’s trying a bit too hard to grab the headlines with misdirected draconian policies and commentary pieces?

What this really told me

So firstly I surmised that both Ryman’s and Portsmouth Council would be a pretty rubbish place to work. Why? Well not least because the middle management can’t tell who’s wasting time and who’s pulling their weight. If they could / did then they’d not judge performance on website logs, but rather by metrics that actually matter and then reward or sack appropriately.

When I was last an employee I probably strayed onto personal business or internet distractions a couple of times a day – but I also arrived early, didn’t smoke (no smoke breaks), generally ate lunch at my desk, generally stayed late, worked on the train on the way into and out-of the office and carried on working late into the night / early morning as the workload (quite often) required. Oh, and I also (I’d like to think) added a level of intellectual input and steering to the business over and above anything that could be judged purely on an hour by hour rate. What would a log looking at my social media access tell you of that?

If there are people taking the Michael within your business then shame on you and your inadequate management and personnel policies for not being able to highlight where that’s happening and take appropriate action against those individuals.

Through these actions you are quite simply, and very publicly, treating your employees like children – so expect them to behave even more as such. I have always worked damned hard, and been rewarded accordingly when appropriate, but if your management can’t sort the wheat from the chaff and you are happy bragging about this managerial inadequacy, then why would I want to work anywhere where I’ll clearly be carrying a load of slackers – because even without the internet then I’m afraid that “not pulling your weight” (might I be so bold as to suggest particularly in some corners of local government) has become a skill set in itself.

Secondly, by closing the door to accessing social media you’re demonstrating, in spades, your ignorance to the benefit social media can bring to your business. Even if we look at the tiny world in which I (and readers of this blog) operate – namely Recruitment / Employee Communications – it’s easy to conceive a bottom line benefit you’d miss out on. Let’s go back to my assertion that perhaps there are 450 staff spending 15-20 minutes a week on facebook (potentially within their own lunch time or before the 9am hooter starts or after the 5pm hometime bell!!) and let’s imagine that perhaps 10% of those people actually enjoyed their job (go on – go with me on this). Perhaps they mention how much they enjoy their job to their network (perhaps 100 strong each?) and then maybe a job arises: what-do-you-know – immediate audience of 4,500 who have already been positively engaged by your employer brand from afar.

So whilst I never had you down as a Mail reader Mr Paphitis – it seems to me that perhaps under your broadsheet-esque Dragons Den persona you’ve so lovingly nurtured, you’ve indeed found your true home writing the kind of brainless sensationalist knee-jerk integrity-less hyperbole-laden cr*p that the Daily Mail has become famous for trotting out to whip up middle Britain to sell more hatred based papers.

Only one question remains for me – anyone got any tips on how I can stop my Dad from reading The Mail?!

"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!

The ultimate phone is here - honest!

well - maybe not really, but this is a very involved, high production piece that is clearly aimed at going viral promoting the Pomegranate Phone "the one device that puts more things in the palm of your hand than you ever thought possible."

I don't want to spoil it for you so go have a look - I'll post an observation about it as a marketing piece later. Will you be chucking in your outdated smartphone to upgrade to a Pomegranate?

 

Easy job searching through phones? The future's here people!

Just wanted to pop a quick post about a little pioneering that's been going on quietly in the job board sector. What with the massive leaps in interface technology on mobiles that have happened over the past couple of years, most notably of course the darling of the sexy smart phones, the iPhone, it was only a matter of time until job boards started trying to really push into that space to further their candidate reach and engagement too.

Now I'm sure there are plenty of iPhone job apps out there (if you've come across one then write up a little review below or send it to us and we'll post it in its own right) - but I felt one I came across did a particularly good job in terms of making the most of the technology. That was the one by 1job.co.uk

I've had a little play - and you know what - it really is as simple as it's shown to be in the youtube clip. And that really is the beauty of it. Not over complicated, not faffy - just simple & effective. Exactly how iPhone apps should be. If I was being REALLY pedantic I'd suggest the developers just relook at how the saved jobs screen editing works and make it more like you find elsewhere in standard apps on the iPhone - but that really is scraping the barrel as there's nothing particularly hard to follow in the way they've built it, it's just that it's not completely consistent and I don't really see why it can't be. 

I should also mention that I came across another by the site AllTheTopBananas.co.uk, but rightly or wrongly when an app asks me to input details like my email address before I get to play then I instantly loose interest - which doesn't make me a great investigative blogger I know, but it is a trait I'm sure I'm not alone in demonstrating, so makes me wonder whether the value gained through a forced registration is enough to compensate for however many other users do like I do and immediately say "thanks, but no thanks".

So well done 1job.co.uk - I really like that. And sorry ATTB, together with the oddest job board name in the UK I think you're missing a trick there.

Taking a little issue with LinkedIn believeing their own hype - Social Recruiting Summit

So for those of you who don't follow @mattalder on twitter (or work in whatever corners of Barkers Matt's cheery demeanor brightens each day, or belong to his close family and are in regular contact with him) you won't know that he's currently hobnobbing with some of the great and most connected of digital recruitment world at the Social Recruiting Summit  - being held at the uber webcool venue that is google HQ.

Anyway - as part of the stream of tweets coming out of google HQ (which, as I write this with the day only just starting, has me thinking that it won't be long before twitter falls over as a direct result of this event!) Matt sent this:

"accuracy of personal info when user has more than 10 connections better than a resume, people don't lie in public" RH #socialrecruiting

Now the RH he references is Reid Hoffman the founder of LinkedIn. And it got me thinking - yes they flippin well do! Certainly in my even limited experience it doesn't really prevent lying. But what worries me most is that encouraging naivety through misguided statements as above perhaps gives a greater false sense of validation to a person's profile and therefore any potential mistruths within.

I believe that as humans we're generally pretty polite to each other (in a "smile and say nothing" as opposed to "open and engaging" kind of way), particularly on a business level. So even if you click on a LinkedIn profile to read someone embellishing themselves to something unrecognisable from that which you know was the role they're describing, sometimes only discernible from the dates matching up with when you worked alongside them, would you really take steps to try and get that changed? And actually - for that matter - what steps can/would/could you take?

I recall instances where people have laughed our loud (yeh - really - not even 'LOL'd, but real laughter) having read what someone has said they've done or been responsible for on their Linkedin profile.

And then there's the validation of the profile "truth" - the recommendations from other people. It's just so, well, easy to ask a bunch of people to say nice things about you being pretty safe in the knowledge that they'll either ignore your request or be nice in the hope that you might reciprocate, perpetuating the flow of banality passing back and forth, with people so keen to scratch each others backs the true value of a reference is all but lost.

Now don't get me wrong - perhaps I'm just to polite (no - really!). I mean I took my profile off facebook because I just didn't like denying "being friends" to people I didn't know or even when I did wasn't particularly friendly with over 20years ago. Perhaps it's just me and I have social issues that transcend into social media. But I feel that Mr Hoffman has perhaps been supping a bit too much of his own Venture Capital PR laden spin-juice and is starting to believe his own hype.

I have no problem giving a reference about someone - did so quite recently as it goes - but that's when I'm asked in confidence to give my honest opinion. Integrity means different things to different people for sure, and there's nothing stopping me spouting banality in a private response to a reference check either - particularly if you wouldn't mind that person moving on from their current employ - but in social space I think the danger of that happening is even greater, so to start giving a greater level of credibility to what someone has made up about themselves being true just because "it's out there for all to see and no-one's contradicted it" I think is naive in the extreme.

LinkedIn is a great background check for starters, a living CV if you will - hell, we've even built integrating features for it into the ATS we've built (sorry for the shameless plug ;) - but to think that "people don't lie in public" is just plain delusional. Has Mr Hoffman never heard of Politicians?!!!! They're like us, just more so.

Workthing+ - what I saw

With the recent launch of Workthing+, the “is it right to charge candidates?” debate was certainly re-ignited (read some of it here on Recruiting Futurology). I wanted to step a little away from that particular cut and thrust and, having tried to give it a bit more time to look at all that’s on offer, give my take on the Workthing+ offer itself. It probably is worth stating for the record though that I have no problem with anyone charging for a service, whatever that may be - I actually kinda prefer that sort of transparency because it allows you to make an informed decision about the value for money you receive, and because you’re paying you are more bought into realising the full benefit of any facility – in short, putting more onus on you to make it work for you.

OK – to the site/facility. My first observation is that there’s a hell of a lot they’ve bundled in. Loads of good stuff. From psychometric tests to a job seekers wiki/forum, to CV builders and activity planning. It’s all pretty nicely set out too (although some of the interface/navigation needs to have some “rough edges” smoothed – that’ll come with feedback and bedding down though), and whilst it’s hard for me as a non-job seeker to give the time and dedication necessary to really use all the facility to test what works for me and what doesn’t, I take my hat off to the boys and girls at Trinity Mirror Digital Recruitment (TMDR) for what they’ve got in place for launch.

If I’m going to be picky I’d have to say that I’d like to have seen more rich media throughout (videos and the like) to really engage the user, elements that would help establish a richer brand personality. The functional rather than experiential approach, I might even go as far as to say “flatness”, is typified by the home page “animated” element that would have been infinitely better had it a voiceover audio streamed with it – but all of this is easy to enhance and I’m sure is on a to-do list somewhere at Workthing+ HQ.

But there was one resource that I felt they’ve missed a trick by not making a consistent element within their own site. They have the facility to have your CV reviewed (a crucial part of the full service offer), but accessing that bounces you to a 3rd party site which kinda breaks my "in-site experience". It got me starting to wonder whether a 3rd party was suddenly going to start pitching me about writing my CV from scratch having already handed over my sign up money. Don't get me wrong - it's far far better to have it than not to have it (however broken it makes my journey), but if Workthing+ is setting up as a one-stop-shop then I feel it needs to look like that in every sense.

But all that said – I applaud the team at TMDR for stepping beyond ‘same old same old’ within the job board market. They have created something that I found to be very comprehensive and certainly doesn’t do the Workthing brand anything but good IMHO.

And one thing I particularly like, in a sad “I’ve clearly been hanging around this industry for far too long” kinda way, is the fact that Workthing started off all those years ago as a site that was intended to be an online careers advisory service first and a job board second. Over the years that got diluted as whoever owned it went for the mainstream “job board business model” – how wonderfully retro for Workthing+ to have effectively come full circle with TMDR, all be it with a changed business model that better reflects how the Internet has evolved over that time. Some good ideas just need time and business belief to prove themselves, here's hoping Workthing+ is given that second time around.

Potential tsunami or ripple? Google signal the WAVEing goodbye of Twitter

Global recession or not, the pace of internet technology development waits for no economic cycle it would seem. Recently google have announced their latest project – something that’s potentially so big they’ve broken with their usual “release it in beta & then keep working on it” approach and have started drawing attention to it months before it’ll be ready for public release. Google Wave promises to be a “new tool for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year”.

Twitter killer? Certainly looks like to me. It’s gonna dent the hell out of FaceBook & other such platforms too you’d have to bet.  So what is Wave – well in their own words:

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

Here's how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It's concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use "playback" to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.

And here’s the video of it being launched

you can find all of this and more (including signing up to be alerted when it is launched) at http://wave.google.com/

It is of course pretty scary if you let yourself think about how much more of the “conversation” & our data this will put within the google domain – and you have to wonder how anyone can now stop them becoming the MegaCorp of many sci-fi nightmares that humans eventually have to rise up and rally against – but right here right now I take my hat off to the visionary and mega clever people at google and pray that the ATS market is way too small, for a few years at least, for them to bother knocking out a killer beta app for that! *Gulp*

☺

The end of Advertising agencies as we know them

This is pretty much a completely lifted article by Sean Carton posted on ClickZ.com, but I just thought it was so well put that I wanted to paste it across. I have taken the liberty of amending it in a few places to make it more UK recruitment industry relevant (talking about TV ads isn't really us), but I think the parallels are so striking overall it holds up. See what you think (oh - and there are some great posts linked to from the article too - so give yourself 15 minutes, get a coffee and have a good read).

The end of Advertising agencies as we know them

Do we really need advertising agencies anymore? Are we witnessing the great "reboot" of the advertising industry hastened (but not caused) by the current recession?

It's pretty obvious to any reasonable person watching the tens of thousands of layoffs in the industry along with the simultaneous implosion of the newspaper industry that the ad biz as we know it is in serious trouble. Couple that with the ongoing decrease in advertising spending along with new studies (such as this one from Microsoft) that predict that the Internet will overtake TV in 2010, and it's clear that advertising as we've all grown to know it is on the way out.

I'm not predicting the death of advertising. That's baloney. If anything, we're witnessing the rebirth of an entire industry that's going to expand in ways we've never thought of before -- especially if we expand our concept of what advertising means. And we'd better. Before we blow it like the newspaper industry has.

To understand the tectonic shift we're in the midst of now, it's helpful to remember where ad agencies came from. Originally advertising agencies were "agents" for newspapers, placing ads produced by clients in newspapers. In 1877, the J. Walter Thompson Co. figured out it could sell more advertising space if it created the ads instead of relying on clients to create ads. The modern agency was born.

As new media developed, the advertising agency adapted. Radio and TV required new creative skills and new people. Agencies kept growing and adding more overhead. Agencies became more unwieldy, more rigid, and more set in their ways.

Then along came the Internet and all that changed.

It took a while, but today advertising is less about the big colourful press ad campaigns and more about producing measurable results across a host of media and channels. Social media, search marketing, and online direct response (with its associated need for candidate-relationship management and other data-handling technologies) have required new skills and and a new way of thinking.

And that's the crux of the issue. Advertising as we've known it has always been about an "interrupt" model that requires candidates to pay for content by sifting through pages of classified print ads. It's been about grabbing and holding attention in a linear way because that's how media worked.

It doesn't work that way anymore. And neither does the advertising agency as we know it.

Why? The full-service monolithic agency model worked fine in a world where there were a small number of national newspapers, a local/regional champion or two and perhaps a niche industry magasine too. It doesn't work when you have to deal with dozens of media channels and a plethora of options within each that change on a nearly daily basis. New technologies pop up (social networking, Twitter, online video, etc.) and new skills and new thinking are needed to deal with them. Large organizations with large payrolls, hierarchical structures, and well-defined (and well-defended) areas of expertise can't possibly hope to make any money when they have to staff themselves with a constantly expanding cast of experts to deal with new media challenges. Add to that a compensation model based on a world that's long gone (retainers and media commissions) and the agency model we've all grown up with starts to look like a relic of the past. Turmoil in the industry provides proof.

So what to do? Simple: explode the idea of the monolithic agency. Get rid of the concept that only an agency that does everything can possibly create and manage large campaigns. Look for more flexible and fluid models that expand and contract as needed, bringing in new expertise when needed and ditching it when it's not. Think distributed, not centralized. Think "collective," not "company."

As more people get laid off and can't find jobs at other agencies (who are also laying people off), more people hanging up their shingle and do whatever it is that they do best, creating an explosion of entrepreneurs and experts who (without the overhead of a big company) can do things cheaper, faster, and more flexibly than their counterparts at big companies.

If this sounds suspiciously like the "free agent" and "new economy" predictions we heard eight years ago, it kind of is. But there's one big difference: now we have the (free!) tools to actually make it happen. Social networking, collaborative tools such as Google Docs, and advances in mobile technologies make it possible to create a distributed team that doesn't need to be in the same place to work effectively.

So what's the agency of the future going to look like? Probably a lot smaller and focused on strategy, account/project management, creative leadership (but not execution), and media strategy (but not planning and buying). Most agencies will revolve around these hubs if they're honest with themselves. Agencies will exist to provide high-level strategic guidance that clients need in a media-chaotic environment. Agencies will expand or contract as needed or will explore radical solutions such as crowdsourcing to get work done for less money.

Whether this scenario turns out to be completely accurate or not remains to be seen. But nobody can look at what's going on today and say that the agency of tomorrow is going to look much like the agency of today or yesterday.

So what do you think? Has Sean hit the nail on the head - or am I just part of that "explosion of entrepreneurs and experts" and therefore my judgment is clouded by desperately hoping that the new world that Sean talks of is to become the new reality?

TribalTrekGate 09 - boldly going into industry folklore

Well - here it is.

There was a bit of a ripple in the webosphere about two weeks ago when we heard tell of a Star Trek Spoof video viewable on YouTube from Tribal Resourcing, fetauring the Senior Management team. Unfortunately it seemed to get beamed back up nearly as quickly as it arrived amongst us.

But the web has a habbit of Kling(ing)on to tomfoolery and one keen eyed & public spirited citizen managed to capture the footage before it hit warp 5 and so, hoping Tribal phasers don't go any higher than just stun, we thought we'd share and let you make your own mind up about it.

Personally - I think if nothing else it shows a bit of personality and a senior management team willing to not take themselves too seriously. And if it doesn't raise a smile (certainly 2nd or 3rd time of watching) then you're dead (Jim).





Oh - and appologies for pun overdrive. What can I say - I tried to contain myself but I got to a stage where I "couldnae tak it anymoor capn!" My pun overide sensors "werre gonna blow" if I didn't redirect the full force of the bad taste photon shield right back into the post.
:-D