I really like this visual presentation and somewhat tongue-in-cheek look at the state of the web. A refreshing change to the oodles of documents us agency-folk pull together on where it’s at. Created by Matthew Inman and found following @Aki Spicer.

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.

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.

I’ve had 2 emails this week from people who I used to work with asking me to join Naymz - a new kind of professional social network. Always a little skeptical, my first thought when the lovely Joanna’s invite popped up was, uh oh, here’s another Quechup. And then Nik’s email popped up. So having not heard of Naymz, decided to do some investigation. (You’ll also note a Linked In invite which I happily accepted as I know Murray well and am comfortable with the Linked In networking thing).

Back to the search: I actually found the most relevant info and a heart-warming tale on Ben Poole’s blog who had signed up for Naymz and received nothing but spam. Not a great advert you’d think but track down to the comments.

There’s the co-founder of Naymz responding personally to the criticism. Not some flunky but the big man himself. And the conversation continues. And continues and each time he answers the criticism openly and honestly and points to content on the site to help answer. And the question I’m asking, “I’m on Linked In, why do I need another business social network?” is helpfully answered. A great example of listening to the interweb conversations and actively particpating. Certainly put a positive slant on my view of Naymz.

But despite this, I’m also a little worried of social network overload what with Linked In, Facebook, Twitter, IM, my Google Reader (inbox zero achieved again today!), my blog, the research/inspiration emails I sign up to and not forgetting my work email, hotmail and gmail accounts. Do I need another? Will I ever get anything done? Can I be bothered to ask all my friends for the 3rd time to be my friend/part of my plans for world domination (er, sorry, professional network)? Or can I afford not to manage my online reputation and am I already seduced by the desire to want a big shiny “10″ on my page?

I’ll mull it over. Be interested to know your view.

First stuff and things of the New Year starts with this off-beat look at the Death Star’s demise in Star Wars

Another outing for bullshit bingo which is always amusing. And working in the world of agencies, too close to the truth sometimes. (thanks to Debbie)

Jeep on Facebook

In case you missed it,Tom Cruise doing weird Scientology vid. I don’t recall any newspaper headlines about Tom stopping at road accidents?

What’s in your name?

And apparently internet advertisjng will be up 30.8% in 2008.Thank fuck.

Martina @ Adverblog has taken user generated content to heart and asked a number of her network to collaborate on the Adverblog Advent calendar asking everyone the same 5 questions. I would recommend reading through them as they give an insight into different campaigns and thoughts on the year ahead from a wide variety of peers. As well as picking up some new bloggers you may be interested in. Here’s my blurb.

1) Which is the (European) digital project that impressed you more this year and why?

I love the VW Night Driving campaign as it’s a great example of the “360″ brand experience but also capitalises on and openly embraces user generated content: creating your own edit of the excellent TV ad using jumpcut and also creating or looking at great night drives from around Europe with a Google Maps mash up. Really taps into the brand promise of the Golf.

2) In your job, which is the most important thing you learnt this year?
That being part of the social media landscape is a fundamental basic before you even start to help clients with strategic direction. How can you have a sensible conversation on the merits of the big shiny object syndrome if you’ve never experienced and participated in Second Life, Twitter, the blogosphere etc. As Kevin Keegan once said, “you can’t win the raffle if you don’t buy a ticket.” Don’t just talk, act.

3) As a digital marketer/creative person what’s on top of your agenda for 2008?
Turning good words and intent into action. Although digital is regarded as important and budgets are shifting, consumers are still ahead of (most) brands in the digital space and corporate barriers and behaviours are, a lot of the time, still rooted in the old school and governed by risk rather than innovation. I love the quote by John Hegarty of BBH which should become our mantra: “from learn and do to do and learn.”

4) What, in your opinion, will be a killer application / key trend in interactive marketing in 2008?
Widgets. Content that educates, entertains and informs will drive the emotional connection between brands and consumers, ultimately leading to ROI. As the atomisation of the space continues, destination sites will still play a role but the content we create must be able to be detached and distributed to wherever the consumer is and wants (especially mobile).

5) Which book (about marketing/advertising/creativity/inspiration etc…) would you give as a Christmas present to Adverblog’s readers?
In my time out before I joined Ogilvy, I re-read these two books by Paul Arden which were originally recommended to me by the lovely Becky Power, now creative director at Full Six. Every page has a great insight into life in general not just our world. And it is still true in these digital times. I particularly love the two words that he pinned above his desk when reviewing work. In times where a lot of work is churn and burn, we should have this as our mantra alongside Mr Hegarty’s words above: “Astound Me”.

And here’s a pic from Durban airport in SA where I was scribbling my notes accompanied by a pint of Castle.

I really like this illustration which I happened upon.

20 blogging tips from MSN

Keep track of all your lists with Flexlists

Yahoo’s innovation recipe which created Pipes

A new kind of web publishing platform via Verdino

Interesting post about college students attitude to advertising

And this just made me laugh. Found it here.