Digital Recruiting

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.

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.

Thanks for coming to the Summer Recruitment Tweetup #RTU

A belated thank you  to everyone who came to the Summer Recruitment Tweetup a couple of weeks ago. Particular thanks must go to my co-organiser Jamie Leonard (now working at The Ladders) and our generous sponsors TwitterJobSearch and 1Job.co.uk

We’ll be looking to do another one in October or  November  so if anyone has any good ideas about formats or venues please get in touch.

For those of you who couldn’t make it on the night this is what you missed…..

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.

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?

 

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/

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.

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.

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.