Digital Recruiting

The RECaid Treasure Hunt; Thursday, 12th November, 2009

Follow the trail of Farringdon's secrets and watering holes - two hours of light mental and physical exercise with socialising thrown in.
Compete for prizes against teams from recruitment comms agencies and media.Help raise money for this worthwhile cause, in support of industry colleagues who have fallen on hard times.Thursday, 12^th November, 2009 (from 18:30). £100 per team of 5 (including drinks, refreshments, and treasure).The RECaid Treasure Hunt has been devised by Ri5, and tested and declared fair and fun by experts.To enter please contact Karen Williams (Karen.williams@sabmedia.co.uk) with the name of your team.  Your £100 entry fee will be exchanged for further instructions and incentives.The RECaid Treasure Hunt

RecAid tops £10,000

The wet weather did nothing to dampen the spirits at the Paramount Club last Friday night, when over two hundred people turned out to launch RecAid.  Steve Halford chaired a lively auction, with holidays, drink and a cricket bat signed by the England team among the items for sale: the bat is now very probably priceless.  Andrew Wilkinson, Mark Horley, and three Simons (Barrow, Bolton and Howard) also went under the hammer for varying sums; we will attempt to bring you news of how wise and valuable these investments turn out to be. Full Story on RI5

The RecAid total now stands at just over £10,000, of which £8,000 was raised at the Paramount.  It's a great start but there's a long way to go.  Already there are plenty of ideas for other events and many offers of help, as well as donations arriving at the RecAid website.

To donate online Just giving RECaid

Fancy getting your Chief Executive to do your ironing? Or have a Creative Director paint your house?

Now’s your chance. On Friday 17th – tomorrow night – some of the biggest names in the industry will auction off their services in aid of RecAid, the fund set up with advertising charity NABS to help those hardest hit by the downturn in the recruitment advertising industry. Simon Howard, Andrew Wilkinson, and Simon Bolton are amongst those taking part.

Other Auction prizes are:

Fully paid weekend in Classic British hotel worth £500
Cases of wine   worth £200
Premier League football tickets worth £1,000
Week golf holiday including £250 flight vouchers worth £ 1,500 
All inclusive Safari Holiday worth £3,000
Signed Chelsea football worth £400
And many more….. 

Plus lots of Raffle prizes too!

To bid, you have to be at the fundraising party to launch the fund, which will take place at the Paramount Club in Centre Point from 6.30pm to 1am.
 Tickets are a donation of £10 (feel free to give more if you’re feeling generous). As it’s a member’s club, you need to reserve your place to get in - go to www.recaid.co.uk and click on the link to make sure your name is on the door.

RECaid Help for the Recruitment Advertising Industry

RECaid
Help for the Recruitment Advertising Industry

RecAid was launched in July 2009 by a group of senior managers and leaders from across the UK’s recruitment advertising industry. 

Formed in response to the plight of former employees of Barkers, the world’s oldest advertising agency, which went into administration the same month, it is designed to help people from the recruitment advertising industry who find themselves in financial difficulty.

The immediate aim is to raise £100,000 to help those who were hit when Barkers went into administration. Although the company was bought out of administration, saving many jobs, up to 250 former employees of the company lost their livelihoods and the redundancy pay that they were promised, leaving many facing severe hardship.

The fund has been launched in partnership with NABS, the National Advertising Benevolence Society, which will oversee the management and use of the fund. However, the fund will be specifically for the recruitment advertising industry. See www.nabs.org.uk for more information on the work and remit of NABS.

PARTY AT THE PARAMOUNT ON 17th JULY

To raise money, we will be holding an event at one of London’s most exclusive clubs, The Paramount at the top of Centre Point, on Friday 17th July. 400 people will be able to attend at £10/head, all of which will go to the fund, plus the proceeds of raffles and competitions to raise money on the night. It will be a night everyone in the industry will want to attend, so book your place now.

http://www.recaid.co.uk/

Publishers spend too little on content

Interesting analysis of the US newspaper industry's cost base by Moody's Investors Service (though most of the rest of the report is unsurprising).

Written by Moody's vice president and senior analyst John Puchalla, the report contends that publishers spend far too much on producing and delivering a printed paper rather than on creating its content and selling it.

Here are the figures behind what Puchalla calls a "structural disconnect": only 14% of cash operating costs, on average, are devoted to content creation, while about 70% of costs are spent on printing, distribution and corporate functions.

The remaining 16% of costs are related to advertising sales, a first-class example of devoting too few resources to the principal revenue driver.

Puchalla sees this as a legacy of the industry's vertical integration and the result, of course, is that the high fixed costs - combined with high debt among many newspaper companies - is squeezing cash flow as revenue declines.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/jun/05/us-press-publishing-newspapers

Interesting Article On Newspapers

This was in the FT yesterday ... Future of Newspapers some very interesting points ... have a good old read.

Advertising not a "good model" for Twitter

Twitter, the microblogging website, is focusing on creating value for consumers and companies before attempting to increase its revenues, but doesn't think traditional advertising will be a "good model", says co-founder Biz Stone. WARC

The future of the workplace

Interesting discussion about the future of the workplace ... very interesting points on how the design of the building helps to attract the right level of talent. 

http://www.monocle.com/sections/design/Web-Articles/The-Future-of-the-Workplace/

A couple of interesting posts about Twitter

When Stars Twitter, a Ghost May Be Lurking - IHT

Is Twitter becoming like MySpace - Brand Republic

I actually have no real opinion on twitter as I do not use it ... but i thought i would try and get down with the cool kids and post a few links to interesting articles about twitter.

I am going back to my hole now, texting people, searching for things and checking email ...

Sorry about removing content

You may have seen a rather nasty post about me recently ... i thought that is odd as I had never met the person.

From further investigation I have had to remove the content because not only had they made the comment but it had been linked to to make sure it ws listed highly in the google search results.

It is rather sad that this industry forum was used for a personal attack.

Sorry as I am a great believer in free speach ... but this was done to play a rather nasty trick.