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.

I continue to admire the chaps at Dare and me old mucker, Professor Emmel. Despite the flowery shirt. Here’s their digital essay. A lovely piece piece of storytelling and thought leadership. Cut out and keep stuff. Here’s a big version to avoid eye strain.

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.

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.

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).

Who better to interview me than my good buddy Spam the Monkey…

Spam: You started this blog a year ago this week, tell us why you started?

Nick: [bluurb] stuff and things started about 2.30am when I couldn’t get to sleep in an odd period in my life. I’ve always been inquisitive and liked to collate and share information and reached my own tipping point to start blogging after meeting and seeing the goatee’d legend that is Greg Verdino in action while at Modem/Digitas and reading his words and also being inspired by a former colleague Professor Emmel. I chose wordpress as they’re free and I’m a tight get.

Spam: give us the headlines…

Nick: 268 posts, 108 comments, 808 spam comments (that’s junk, not comments about you), c.25,000 total hits. Unknown feeds as WordPress don’t track these anymore and I’m not geeky enough to know how to find this another way. I have no idea if these are good or bad or ugly. I enjoy doing it though.

Spam: last year was pretty shitty for you wasn’t it, huh?

Nick: yeah, that’s why your mum, Sue, sent you over from Boston to cheer me up. My dad died unexpectedly in April last year so that’s not going to be a happy anniversary in a few weeks. It’s still so hard to describe without falling into cliches. I’m just amazed how strong my mum has been through it all. And then my brother did his best to scare the shit out of us with his serious car accident in September when with slightly different circumstances he may not have been with us either. Through it all it makes you realise what’s important. I’ve also changed jobs twice which has been interesting and met some great people and learned some new things too but I’m hoping where I’ve landed will be all tickety-boo as Billy Connolly says. I think and hope 2008 will be better on many levels and you’re going to be Uncle Spam soon. Better tell your Uncle Brendan and your mum too otherwise they’ll be pissed with me for not knowing.

Spam: Damn straight mo fo, you don’t want to upset the Philly boy, Uncle Brendan. Anyways, what have you learned through being a member (fnarr, fnarr) of the blogosphere?

Nick: that it gives you confidence and credibility in talking about social media, web 2.0 etc. with your clients and colleagues alike. It’s a bit like homework and showing desire to know your subject. I’m amazed at how many people still have out-dated opinions about blogs, flickr, facebook etc. when they don’t actively participate and experience and be part of the conversation. Why aren’t you? I’ve also “met” a great deal of people, made new contacts and found some incredible sources of new inspiration. I like the fact that you can take a few different viewpoints from both seasoned and respected guys and some completely unknown chaps and enhance your own views and perspectives. I like the fact you can never stop learning.

Spam: and what’s not so great about it?

Nick: because you constantly find new stuff it’s easy to suddenly have a reader that’s way over 1,000 unread items. You have to continually refine your reading otherwise you just get swamped. There’s also the temptation to sign up for every new thing that’s out there (the next big thing or shiny box syndrome) and suddenly you’re having to update your status across many different applications. I’ve tended to stick to the blog and facebook with a smattering of Twitter.

Spam: we could go on for ages but I’m desperate for a pint… Ringwood Brewery pint of course. Shall we?

Nick: Yes, lets. You’re buying you tight f…

Thanks for being part of this adventure. Here’s to the next year!

They say change is good and everything is changing for me right now so it’d better be good. Having a child is a momentous occasion in itself and made me realise that I want to work closer to home but still have an exciting, challenging career. So for the first time in about 12 or so years I won’t be getting on the commuter express anymore and travelling into London town.

I will be starting at Lawton Communications Group in Southampton today. Don’t be mistaken that this is swapping bright lights, big city for afternoons by the Solent supping G&T or watching tractors go by. No chance. Lawton are a thriving business doing some incredibly creative and exciting digital work packed with some serious artisans and professionals. And I hope to bring my alleged talents to the mix in the planning team at Lawton as well as further learning my craft from and being inspired by those around me. Sitting in a centralised planning hub means I will get to work across a number of the group businesses including FivebyFive digital providing variety and constant challenge. I was sad to say cheerio to the people I got to know at Ogilvy and the clients I worked with, especially after such a short time, but this is the right choice for me, right now and gives me great opportunities both at work and at home.

I’m also still amazed and impressed by the way we found each other last year. They had been doing some web research for some presentations and came across my ramblings on these very pages. And liking what they saw and seeing I was available having left Modem/Digitas, got in touch speculatively. How cool is that? I got my new job because of my blathering in the blogosphere. And my new boss, like my old one (good luck @ Iris, John), has a blog too. I also love the phrase they use on their site which sums up the passion of the people I will be working with: we love the smell of digital in the morning. I can’t wait.

As an aside: in a slight departure from some Bowie-inspired ones, this headline taken from Soft Cell lyrics which is far better when Marc Almond sings it with Jools Holland and his rythm & blues orchestra.

As you get older, you get smarter and that can hinder you because you try to gain control over the creative impulse. Creativity is not like a freight train going down the tracks. It’s something that has to be caressed, and treated with a great deal of respect. If your mind is intellectually in the way, it will stop you. You’ve got to programme your brain not to think too much.
Bob Dylan.

Self expression? Instinct? Borrowed interest? Experimentation?

Image source

Best Ugly. WTF? It’s a new book about restaurant design and architecture by AvroKO where the phrase is explained as:

“… all things that are beautiful and charming in an off-beat, sometimes awkward manner.”

I quite like that sentiment that not everything has to conform or be conventionally aesthetically pleasing.

A day book for creative types. And the main site at Behance has some really interesting and inspiring content.

Some poncy stuff for Dom Perignon featuring Karl Lagerfeld and Helena Christensen. In the buff (Her, not him. Thankfully.).

Personalise your M&Ms. A step too far for personalisation?

Without getting too much into bodiy functions, I think it’s fair to say that most chaps I know have a favourite trap in which to do their business. And for a few days, this was stuck on the inside of the door of my “local”, prompting me to add a response.

I can’t claim to take credit for “the bog blog: the blog you write while on the bog”, that was by the hardest working man in advertising, Chris Ryan. The next day the yellow sticky was gone. So perhaps the idea wasn’t strong enough to take hold. There are a few bog blogs out there but mainly extolling virtues of traps up and down the lands. Inspiration can strike anywhere but clearly the gentlemen folk of Ogilvy care not to in the toilette. Any advances on ideas in the lav?