AdAge have compiled the best bits from Joseph Jaffe’s recent presentation at the Association of National Advertisers’ Integrated Marketing Conference. Some great examples here, some of which are new to me, some of which have passed into folklore. I like the way Jaffe has also categorised the mistakes: faking, manipulating, controlling, dominating and avoiding. There’s also a neat analogy at the end about how most campaigns are like a firework display. A bit of whizz bang and ooh and then it disappears. Goes dark. What happens next? That’s our job.

While we’re talking social media examples, here’s a deck I pulled together for our online PR agency, headstream about the importance of online PR. Included toward the back are some examples of shockers (inc. Sony PSPS a la Jaffe above) and also some good ones including an antidote to the Starbucks slam in the video above.

Just over a year ago, Microsoft released “Bring the Love Back” and received great acclaim. A year later, here’s the follow up.

Microsoft are looking to move beyond just the film and:

…we want to try and create an online marketing community and bring as much inspiration as possible to marketers and everybody in the marketing, advertising and publishing business, whether they are marketers, designers or developers.

The ambition is great. Here’s the site where it will come to life. In a bit of second album syndrome, the video itself is not quite as compelling as the original but then it’s just not about the movie this time. But it still has some amusing anecdotes that we’ve all suffered as digital marketers fighting the good fight.

Here’s something I cobbled together for a pitch. Can’t tell you who for obviously. Be interested to know your thoughts.

The world is changing. Digital is important today and, in the near future, the “always connected” person will become ubiquitous. Digital will become the de-facto go-to resource for everything.

Don’t be confused that this means just the home PC: witness the rapid growth in mobile internet usage, fuelled by the accessible interface of the Apple iPhone, interactive services via digital TV and average internet usage overtaking traditional media such as TV and newspapers.

While digital offers more opportunities to target and measure more effectively than ever before, the way users consume digital has also changed the way brands need to behave in the digital space. Where traditional media (web 1.0) is shouting, web 2.0 is about conversations. Consumers expect to be involved, engaged and invited to collaborate. They have on-demand expectations; they expect real-time dialogue and want personalised experiences.

These changes apply equally to recruitment as it does to traditional brand advertising. Digital will never be about one piece of technology or ad format. It will never be about a destination site alone. Or just banners driving to it. Great digital strategy is and will continue to be delivered by utilising the world of digital marketing opportunities. Detaching it. And then having your brand advocates distributing the message, rippling it through their social network. We need to evolve beyond a placing opportunities on Monster and our corporate job board.

We think recruitment advertising will evolve in the following ways:

Leverage web 2.0

Web 2.0 technologies and sites enable brands to reach and influence new users without heavy investment in technology and IT. It also taps into the conversations and places where users are now searching for new roles. Digital has changed the mix where the recruitment ad is not the sole place people go to.

People now find jobs for each other. Building and leveraging networks on Linked In and using the professional services to seek out referrals, post jobs and build “expert status” through the Answers section is both low risk and differentiates you from the crowd and can highlight your comments and input to the network community.

Similar routes to market may be becoming a regular and insightful commentator on contextually appropriate blogs or social networking sites or a trusted source on Yahoo! Answers, which is becoming an increasingly powerful influencer. Both Linked In and Yahoo! Answers provide destinations for like-minded individuals to share interview strategies, job advice, salary negotiation strategies and “inside” information about working for certain employers.

Ensuring your company’s Wikipedia entry is current and reflects your employer brand is already expected, no longer an option.

Re-invent the job description

Traditional job descriptions are just brochureware. They don’t tell the story. They’re not transparent or authentic. Digital can make the job description live in full colour rather than black and white; give job seekers access to employees doing similar jobs through blogs (corporate or personal), podcasts that add personality and richness, live Q&A sessions in either discussion board or using new technologies such as Skype or Oovoo. This engenders trust, authenticity and provides more insight into the company than a one-liner on the recruitment ad.

Talk to them on their terms, in their place

Because of the fragmented nature of the web, your digital presence needs to reflect this fragmentation and not produce a “one size fits all” approach. A centralised place for job seekers to submit resumes and match to your needs is still relevant but not the only tactic you need to use. For example, Ernst & Young attracted high quality college graduates through Facebook. They sponsored a group, posted information on working at the company, had regular live Q&A sessions and promoted on-campus recruiting events. This not only distinguished them from other companies in their field but pre-qualified high-calibre applicants through an open, honest dialogue and targeting key campus’ to build relationships.

Activate your brand advocates

Your best source of new recruits is the ones you already have. Your employees can be the most persuasive (and also most destructive) advocates for your brand.

Identifying and empowering a small team of top performers who are already engaged in social media will raise awareness of the opportunities and as they are likely to be of positive persuasion to your brand, they will need little encouragement to spread the word about who they work for on their social media profiles and talk about their work.

This does come with a need for the company to shift from a natural protective stance over its brand and find a comfortable place between policing and releasing the brand.

Re-invent the print product

As recruiters shift budgets online, they will use print primarily to raise awareness of the company and direct people online to their corporate sites, instead of putting job listings in the newspaper. Newspapers should develop new branding products, such as allowing recruitment-focused ads to appear in the front section of the paper. They will also use editorial print content to draw passive job seekers to the recruitment section, just as they do in their real estate and automotive sections.

Do and learn

While digital can be measured to the nth degree, there is no pre-set formula as there may be in direct mail, for example. Technology is moving apace and consumer behaviour fragments and re-invents itself with alarming speed meaning that you need to constantly innovate, stay on top of trends and opportunities. It means you need to do and learn rather than the commonly accepted wisdom of today of learn and do. Build on what is working and change what is not.

Sources: Forrester.

Image source.

A couple of weeks back I attended a CIM seminar on how web 2.0 can help your business punch above it’s weight. As it was local, for once didn’t cost the earth and had web 2.0 in it I thought I’d better pop along.

I liked this:

- the phrase “gifted amateur” basically covering how web 2.0 technology can make a broadcaster, DJ, journalist, dare I say professional etc. out of any of us.

- the chart on slide 12 that visualises the gap and opportunity for web 2.0 and how SMEs in particular can rapidly scale using this rather than high investment & expertise in IT systems and people.

- being informed about another social network called ecademy that is a niche for businesses. And if I can read my notes correctly has 150,000 users worldwide.

- a great example of a garden company who use their passion for their work to run a weekly podcast. Which lasts 45 minutes. And reaches 10,000 subscribers via iTunes. Wow. Imagine 5 years ago, no way could she have done that. She’d had to have wangled her way into a regular guest slot on a local radio station. But with a PC, microphone, freely available software and some time and effort, she’s channelled that passion and sharing it with like minded people. Extending the brand experience beyond the website and the printed ad. Someone in the audience didn’t quite get why anyone would listen to a 45 minute podcast but they missed the point. For niche audiences with shared passions, people do.

I was a bit bemused by:

- while I agree with the premise that SME’s can indeed punch above their weight (as can individuals like me) using the power of web 2.0, I disagree (and made the point in the discussions at the end) that corporates are not making strides as quickly in web 2.0 because of their IT restrictions (equipment, policies etc.). Having worked with a number of corporates of late, the IT department has been a factor but often the least of the worries. It’s more the scale of the organisation requiring multiple approval points, quite often fragmented budgets which restrict/impact decision making and overly protective legal and CSR teams who disable the art of conversation.

- some of the sweeping generalisations such as “if you blog once per week, you’ll be in the top 100 bloggers.” I found that misleading.

- that Twitter was being introduced to a relatively inexperienced digital audience. Even some of my colleagues who do digital haven’t got a clue what the point of Twitter is so to explain that alongside general social media principles seemed a surprising choice. Although saying that I’ve been following @lisaharris since the event and have found some interesting content.

- that Squidoo was brought into the mix as something every business should have. This confused me. A lot. Squidoo say: “Squidoo is about finding people when you care what they know instead of who they know.” Which is OK. But Squidoo is quite US centric. And doesn’t really get talked about that much as far as I can see. Certainly not with the thought leaders I sneak up on and read. I can’t help thinking Squidoo was being used because it’s founder is Seth Godin who does come up with some cracking business ideas. I’d love to have seen more on why this was pushed. I would have spent more time on what tools you can use to build a fantastic site with little/zero tech knowledge using tools that are already out there, e.g. freewebs, or more explanation on Google Ad Words and SEO which can scare people who work in digital let alone normal humans. Or maybe how you can see what people may be saying about you with Google Alerts. How to aggregate your data using Google Reader. Maybe I’m just being picky?

- surprised that Google docs had only come to the presenters attention the day before. But then maybe they’re surprised I hadn’t been aware of ecademy.

But overall I enjoyed it. Also made me chuckle when they said they’d been working on this research project for over a year. I can imagine we’d probably get a couple of weeks tops in agency world to deliver thinking on this if it was a client brief

Here’s a link to the team’s blog. Get in touch with them if you need SME and web 2.0 stuff.

Tip of the hat to Greg Verdino.

Interact Congress 2008 is a conference about Connecting European eMarketing to be held in Berlin across 2-3 June. And being in Germany, it’s hosted by the German IAB and supported by all the national IABs (UK link here) and the European IAB.

And I’m truly honoured to have been invited to collaborate on the Interact Congress blog for 2008. I look forward to sharing my thoughts and ideas with some of Europe’s top bloggers on the blog when I get back from hols in 2 weeks. Please drop me a line either through the comments section below or direct to nr_gill@hotmail.com and let me know any thoughts or subjects you’d like me to raise.

I wonder if my new employers would like to send me out there to hob nob and spread the love?

And download an IAB report on UGC here.

Think you’ve got the next Gorilla inside you? Do you have Heidi’s in your sub-consciousness? Or could you bring a fresh take on a global issue? Creativity doesn’t always reside in the creative department. And here’s your chance to prove it and win a luxurious Cannes trip so you can be demanding, eccentric and quaff litres of fine wine and worse.

Getty Images have created the Ultimate Pitch competition: challenging you to respond to their creative brief with the propisition:

Express an idea that could make a world of difference.

The only catch is you have to use some Getty imagery, choons or video in your submission. Not too much of a hardship considering the breadth and quality of their work.

The competition is open to everyone from one man bands to global goliaths and is being judged by some of the most well-known big cheeses in the industry. So how about it?

Competition closes May 14.

Thanks to Andrew Ballantyne Gilbert from DDB London who created this and told me about this direct as an outreach to the AdAge Power 150 bloggers. Will share my pitch with you in due course.

Computers, web n stuff. All geeky, spotty boys, right? Wrong. The girls have caught up and overtaken the boys, at least in the US. Read this article in NY Times for interesting insight and more nuggets like this (thanks to Mel Ferguson):

…among Web users ages 12 to 17, significantly more girls than boys blog (35 percent of girls compared with 20 percent of boys) and create or work on their own Web pages (32 percent of girls compared with 22 percent of boys).

Stats backed up by a recent eMarketer piece on more females than males online in US.

You probably also automatically think guys and gaming go together too but not so. In another show of support for the ladies, here’s a thought provoking post about how profanity and general insults have altered the “outsiders” perspective of gaming. There’s also a quite shocking video of someone gaming and basically sounding like he has Tourettes.

And is it any wonder the broad church of the advertising industry struggles to have senior females when repulsive opinions like the one in the image below are held. Very wrong. Full article here.

But that’s quite a miserable end to a post so let’s have some amusement by being wedgie-free from Hanes (via Daily Candy).

And if that wasn’t enough… I work with the no.1 (Kadri - on the right) and no. 3 (Katrina - on the left) hottest singles in the industry according to Revolution mag. Here they are (thanks to Katie White’s facebook).

“Markets are conversations.”

Well, we all should know that by now and should be putting it in place in all our work. But this statement originated in 1999. Way back when dial up tones were the norm. The statement came from the Cluetrain Manifesto which was way ahead of its time. This report from Technorati and Ogilvy revisits that manifesto and shows how to put it into place when you get into work on a Monday.

What I like is that there are some real examples of conversational marketing, social media, call it what you will. And how they worked and why. These case studies cover:

• An Inconvenient Truth
• Microsoft sponsored Live Earth site
• Shut up and sing campaign
• Scion and the Indie film community
• Sun microsystems

There’s a nice diagram too for finding, concentrating and syndicating conversations (above) and we all like more pictures, less words in any document.

I’m not sure it was necessary to devote a half page to a proposed conversational advertising code of conduct considering the one word that springs to mind and sings from the page is “transparency”. And somewhat disagree that “the real spoken language of peers is so much more interesting than copywriting.” Not if you have a good copywriter and they’re released from any corporate and legal shackles.

But well worth a read first thing on a Monday to get the old grey matter warmed up.

Found via Greg Verdino.

In a blatant bit of self-promotion, I really like this post. Spinning Around (thanks for the tag) has pulled out the UK blogs from the Ad Age Power 150 and ranked them. I’m pleasantly surprised (and I’ve moved up from the +500 rank in the overall list). But more importantly, this list also gives me an opportunity to discover more home grown talent in the UK blogosphere.

And while we’re on the Ad Age Power 150, here’s what some of the bloggers on that list think will happen this year.

Update 25.03:

And while we’re on blog lists, here’s the most powerful 50 blogs in the world.