Digital Recruiting

Twitter & LinkedIn Partnership Merges Professional with Personal

One of the best pastimes I've read on a CV from a prospective candidate was;

 'reading, socialising and...thinking.

In an evening/weekend they liked nothing better, than to sit down and have a good think.........this certainly put some thoughts into my head.

It would seem that the anouncement that you can share your Tweets on your LinkedIn profile will also provide employers with an insight into your personality, pastimes and what makes you tick. As Biz Stone, Co-founder of twitter states; people are finding:

'the personna they create for themselves on the web is part of their resume in many ways'.

 
This certainly goes some way to blurring the line between your professional social web presence - LinkedIn and your more personal presence - or 'brand' on the web, on a site such as Twitter.

The partnership is great for LinkedIn in terms of making it a more dynamic 'real' time stream of info and super for twitter and its expansion plans for 'putting a little twitter in everything'.

'Real time' insights are what its all about.

Will we get real-time insights on real thoughts and real personna's or up-to-the minute insights on a contrived personal/professional brand?

Perhaps it will be like Big Brother - where after a while, you just don't notice that the camera's are there anymore.....oops.

Its not Y!ou...it's..er....

What's a brand all about?

Well,...employer brands, they are a representation and reflection of an existing, living, breathing organisation and its' culture, no? its actual values, it's reality...it's aspirations to an extent.

I was in San Francisco on holiday recently and the Yahoo  -'It's 'Y!ou' campaign was literally everywhere you went. I thought it was maybe a west coast of America, Silicon Valley-type campaign, but sure enough, when I got back to London and climbed into my cab and had a look around - it was eveywhere to be seen too. I thought...big media budget....hmnn...wonder who has that account...:o)

Seemingly the media budget was in the region of a huge $100 million - certainly it got my attention (on two different continents) but what impact did it make? 

It was interesting to be shown this chart below when I got back to work:

It would appear that for all the investment in the campaign, it's just not having a postive impact on the brand, quite the opposite in fact.

I guess the issue with the message is, it's not telling me anything about Yahoo! and who and what it is - what it stands for. Yes, personalisation is the future, and I like that you tailor your product/company to me...but that's if its relevant to me as an individual person - telling everyone its all about them...well, it just doesn't resonate. Perhaps our tribal instinct gives us a desire to pin our badge to something we identify with - and this goes for both consumer and employer brands.

p.s. nice article and debate about campaign here.

Social Web v. Destination Sites

Hey there, I'm back after a bit of a break - on hols and busy busy at work.

Here's something I wanted to share which is really interesting - its a post noting how traffic to brands destination sites is declining compared to the rising traffic on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Its all about the content and where its being consumed i.e. in the social web and less so at a brands own website.

Is the writing on the wall for a company's website?

Maybe not just yet, but it does reinforce the fact that clients should be engaging with their target audience where they are consuming media - on the social web. A considered, well thought-out social media strategy, where a clients site is integrated is key.

Investors in People

I saw a really interesting tweet today from one of my favourite blogs READWRITEWEB - a blog I really recommend for the latest news and developments in technology and communications.

Jobvite a new start-up venture has secured $8.25m in venture capitalist funding.

'The company pioneered social recruitment with the first on-demand application that enables the whole company to participate in hiring and allows recruiters to tap employees’ existing professional and social networks to increase referral hiring.'

“This recession is fundamentally changing recruitment, pushing companies to become more cost-effective, innovative and strategic. Companies are looking to the technology industry to make this possible,” said Dan Finnigan, President and Chief Executive Officer of Jobvite.

Technology, social media and a companies best ambassadors - employee's - sounds like a great combination.

Speaking of which, I've been pretty busy lately - working on the global social media strategies for one of our global clients and a new client who has hired us specifically to do their social media. We've been using our bespoke approach to social media devised by our MBA department - MediaCom Beyond Advertising- who specialise in all things content and beyond traditional paid for media.

Really exciting projects.

Sony Chooses to Capitialise not Censure

A lovely example of how copyright owners can interact with and benefit from unlicensed content users.

The future of copyright and content use was demonstrated by Sony when a Bride and Groom filmed themselves and their wedding party dancing up the aisle to the song 'Forever' by Chris Brown.

The clip uploaded on youtube has recieved nearly 13 million views and 65,000 comments.

Instead of blocking its use, Sony 'added a simple pop-up overlay that offers users a chance to purchase the song from iTunes or Amazon. According to YouTube, in the last week, the year-old song has risen to #4 on the iTunes charts and #3 on Amazon.'

A sign of things to come.

The Ferrero Rocher Effect

So we may all remember the supreme  Ferrero Roche 'Ambassador's Party' TV ad - 'Delicieux'...'excellente.'...'Monsieur, with this Roche, you are really spoiling us!'.

Ah - Ambassadors - it's generally recognised that your employee's are/can be the best ambassadors of your employer brand.

A lot of my Aunts's and Uncle's worked in Marks & Spencer's when I was growing up - they were lifetime employee's and I remember they were the very best ambassador's a company could hope for- they weren't shy about telling you all about the benefits (and trials and tribulations, of course) of working for what was certainly a premium employer, back in the day in Belfast.

It's no coincidence that so many companies are using their staff in their TV advertising - Sainsbury's with their Mum returner to work character - brilliant dual branding ad for the employer and consumer brand. B&Q with all their regional staff talking about their products etc

I was watching TV with my friend Mary the other week and one such ad came on TV featuring staff and I said to her 'see all the companies, using their employee's in their ads these days'.

She replied 'Well you know why that is, don't you?, I replied, 'well, yes, its because your staff are the best ambassadors of your brand' (honestly, our conversations aren't usually this tedious..).

She said 'No, its because they can't afford to use real actors these days!'

So cynical...

Anyway to get to the point of my post - I saw yesterday that Primark staff were being investigated for calling customers less than complimetary names on Facebook (i.e. pikey's etc) and were being investigated.

This follows similar issues with Virgin Atlantic, Tesco and Waitrose staff and of course the infamous YouTube video of Domino's staff 'hanging out' in the kitchen..eurgh!.

What's was particularly interesting was Maria on the team mentioned yesterday that her mate has started a new job at a legal firm. One of the clauses on her contract was that they are not allowed to mention work, clients etc on social networking sites such as Facebook or they will face disciplinary action. I imagine this may well be standard across all companies now.

It seems that your employees as ambassadors can be a double edged sword. It's clear that employee's need clear directions on what is and isn't expected from them - i.e. don't slag off customers or clients. However, it's a fine line as you can't be too prescriptive on people's ability to talk about their working life.

In any social media strategy the option of using identified employee 'mavens' is attractive, even preferable, as, at the end of the day, in business and in life, people buy people.

CIPD Awards

We attended the CIPD awards on Tuesday night at the Honourable Artillery Company near Old street.

The sun was shining, the location lovely and MediaCom's work was recognised with three gongs. Two for our work for Shell with JWT (Digital and Innovation) and one for The Met Police with aia (Outdoor) - an integrated media campaign that involved a media recruitment first with a digital six sheet.

This outdoor recruitment first, was one, in a long line of innovative firsts, planned by Celine Marshall in our team here for the Met Police, and so, we were delighted that this was recognised with an award.

It's a fantastic example of how media choice can bring a great creative message to life and make it a real success.

The Met police campaign put me in mind of Dave Trott's recent posts on his blog at Brand Republic on Upstream Media thinking where he gives examples of how media choice and the actual context really makes the ad. He says;

'It wasn’t me that said it, but it’s true. If you’ve got a creative media department, the medium is the message.'

He goes on to say in his Context is Content post :

'Maybe advertising should stop putting all our attention into judging content in a vaccum. Maybe we should only ever judge content in context. Because the ad is the context.'

 

Although it was a successful night, the atmosphere was understandably a bit flat with the recent news of the Barkers/TCS purchase from administration by Penna.

 

This was the main topic of conversation and whilst some people had a view of what happened, I think most people were still trying to get their head around the whole thing and really felt for the people involved.

 

Whilst this type of situation has happened before, especially in times of a severe recession, what's different now is the existence of social media. People have an opportunity to discuss events in a open community forum like Ri5.co.uk - albeit in a predominantly anonymous capacity.

 

Hopefully this dialogue will be a positive thing and cathartic for all parties involved.

 

Biting the hand that feeds you

I was at one of my oldest friend's Charlotte's Solstice day party on Saturday.

It started at 3pm and ended at 3am and was hosted at the commune/shared-housing home that Charlotte lives in in Islington.

The day involved a fig tree ceremony where all party goers congregated in the garden, meditated and made a wish for the community and for themselves. Yup - was full-on, tree-hugger, liberal paradise.

The sun was still shining when a lady came up to myself and a friend and asked could she have a cigarette, we happily obliged and we got to talking. She was in her fifties, already a bit tipsy and was a journalist - an investigative journalist.

She was now teaching a journalism course in a London Uni and as she put it, was delighted to be giving something back to the younger generation after an illustrious career, working for all the broadsheets.

The talk turned to Twitter, upon where she declared herself a complete technophobe and wanted to know what all this twittering was about. Indeed she was very concerned about what jobs her students would have when they graduated, as all these bloggers, were thinking they could do the job of a proper journalist.....

It was music to my ears, I had in front of me a living and breathing Fleet street dinosaur, aghast at what the Internet was doing to newspapers.

She declared: 'Well, we'll always need newspapers, you know.'

I replied 'Why's that?'

She retorted 'er, well, em...well.....er..can I say that you have a very one track mind?

No, no,' I replied, 'I'm merely playing devil's advocate....'

'Well, people need papers, its important for the brand - you can't have a news brand like the Guardian if it doesn't appear in a paper. These bloggers like Guido Fawkes are biting the hand that feeds them. Take what the Telegraph has recently done with MP's expenses - a splendid job. Now, yes you could call it cheque book journalism, but that has required an army of full time journalist pouring over the fine detail of those expense claims.....how can a blogger like Guido Fawkes ever do that?'

The conversation went on, like this, to and for, was quite enjoyable, although I had to try and not upset her too much with my controversial views - it was a party after all.

I was particularly interested in the article in the Guardian (online) I saw on Monday about the Guardian launching a crowdsourcing project on the MP expenses data:

'The response has been enormous, the results intriguing and, thanks to the efforts of many thousands of Guardian readers, not one MP who has put in a dodgy expenses claim can think about relaxing just yet.

In a groundbreaking "crowd-sourcing" exercise, the Guardian appealed for help in sifting through the huge amount of data on MPs' expenses that was unleashed at the end of last week. Almost 20,000 people have taken part in gathering facts for the online project and about 160,000 pages have been examined.'

Just as well I wasn't aware of this on Saturday.....

Did you know?

As Alex tells us all about the latest 'wave' of advertising below - I thought we could end the week with some stats from attending the recent EIAA conference (European Interactive Advertising Association).

- Total Internet spend in 1999 came to £40m, which was seen back then as massive growth. Ten years later, we're now at £3.3 billion!

- Ten years ago the three largest reaching sites in the UK were MSN, Yahoo and Freeserve! (remember Freeserve? and where is Google?)

- Today, 45% of our Internet time is spent on just 10 sites, meaning the thousands of remaining domains have to fight it out for our remianing online time.

 

Today our audience are'media multi-taskers' - consuming more than one media at a time - e.g. surfing online while watching TV etc etc

In terms of the incredible transformation of the communications landscape, I really liked Evan Williams sentiment, on his recent talk about Twitter and its unexpected uses on ted.com

'Follow the hunch but never assume where it will go......'

What Women Want

Dell have launched Della - a website for women and how their computers can help enhance their lives by looking cute, fashionable and help them count calories.

Look above, at how the happy women, sit closely together with their pastel coloured laptops and share laughs, horopscopes and no doubt, are on Cosmo online, gleaning pearls of wisdom on how to make their relationship work.

Puts me in mind of one of my favourite Harry Enfield schetches - Women know your limits

So, how can I expect to benefit from a netbook as detailed on the Della site?

Well, once I get beyond how darn cute they are I can easily find recipe's, count calories, watch fitness videos and ensure I shop successfully at vintage clothing stores. Then there is the accessories section - where I can shop to my hearts content.

Oh dear...why are women seen as a specific niche audience when it comes to technology, who need to be given child-like tech tips like morons?  it's....well....its just plain insulting.

Note to self - do not ever do this in recruitment.

So, which colour is your favourite? I just can't decide!