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.

I’m pure. Suspiciously so. Or at least so say the folks at ghd on their new dark or pure site. What sounded like an interesting ploy turned out to be a tiresome exercise that took forever to load as the site was so flash heavy although as the content didn’t actually do much I have no idea why. The “are you dark or pure” submission was salacious only in the first question which asked whether I’d ever cracked the whip. The rest of it was a bit tame. And then when you expect an instant answer (after all, digital has created real-time expectations), you have to wait 4 days to be told whether you’re dark or pure. Why?  And it went to junk mail. And then a few days after that you get an exclusive preview of… the new hair tongs!

OK, I knew ghd was about hair products. And OK, I know it’s aimed at girls so the hair straighteners were never going to appeal but the site experience and the brand experience wasn’t dark or pure. Just crap. Grey text on black background? Contrast, people, contrast. Pretty much no content of any use? A real shame as they have a point of difference in their brand expression everywhere else, especially their tone. An example of how not to do this thing called digital.

The only slight bit of redemption is the dark or pure models. Look closely, they both have the flash loading icon. Why? It’s a static image! And, breathe…

Tip of the hat to Greg Verdino.

Diesel & Adidas bring you 83 ways to waste your time (via Damiano on Twitter)

International web design and flash showcase

Times article on how to make the most of a corporate blog with lots of links for examples and reports.

Quaker Oats join the digital conversation

Cyberpsychology and Behaviour research paper entitled “Distress, Coping, and Blogging: Comparing New MySpace Users by Their Intention to Blog” via Bnox

HD video in ads

A sackful of stuff and things today as will be away for Christmas.

God bless your brand (thanks to Bo Hellberg)

Fancy attending a Jedi bootcamp? These people exist.

Star in a soap by uploading your photo to check if you’re hot or not. (source: popbitch)

Get fed up with those inane, circular questions about having content above the fold? Use this as ammo to wipe the floor with ‘em. And this as a fabulous creative example to put the knife in. (thanks to Karen Gwyer)

Fabulously weird story about coffee bukkake.

A year of ideas.

Physics get all web 2.0 and funky (thanks to Mel Ferguson)

Ever get stuck trying to find logos to dump into slides. Here’s a load. Free. (source: Drew’s Marketing Minute)

Not content with advertising Snickers, Mr . T turns his mohawk to World of Warcraft

Buy an innocent smoothie, input your code and get a tree. The tree will provide local communities in India and Africa with an income for 10 years for looking after the tree. They will also receive training on sustainable agriculture. Learn more about this great brand experience and buy one get one tree today.

Some nice web 2.0 touches on the site including a virtual forest where you can find your and your friends trees, donate your tree to a friend, a dynamic tree-o-meter and get a badge to detach and display on your blog/space etc.

Stephen Fry talks. Enjoy.

I was the first person I ever knew on the Internet.

Internet

Web 2.0

Technology

Found this & lots more on video jug.

Image and lots more Melchett from Wikipedia.

FT article on social networks by the ever resourceful and useful Bowen Craggs. (Image source)

Improvement by innovation article on CNET (found reading Armano on Twitter)

Here’s the top 50 football kits

And following on from the men & washroom yuk story recently, here’s a picture from Nicky that could get guys to step up to the bowl. As long as they’re at the right height.

Here’s a map of he DNS root servers globally. I didn’t realise that in 2002, an attack disabled 9 of the then 13 root name servers. And then in February 2007, 30,000 zombie PCs, traced to South Korea, battered the servers: affecting six, two badly. If all the servers were to be taken out, things would grind to a halt: after 1 hour, 2% of the web would stop, rising another 2% for each hour leaving nothing in less than two days. These facts are from an article in Esquire October 2007. Some more factoids from the article:

There are more than 4 million CCTV cameras in the UK with the average Londoner being captured on film 300 times a day

Today, an American child is 6 times more likley to play on a computer console than ride a bike

An ICM poll in June 2007 reported that half of 25-34 year olds claimed they would not be able to carry on without email

Over half of Korean 15-25 year olds believe themselves to be addicted to the internet

More people visit Korean-made online virtual worlds than visit Korea itself

Can Gmail become your social brain? Interesting comments against the Google big brother and the desire fort a “social journal” to be created. Not being too much of a geek some of the hints on the more powerful features of Gmail are pretty useful.

And now for something completely different: Marc Jacobs has a VIP Club. Nice smells, but perhaps they could say what I might get for the trouble of requesting a membership thingy from a stockist when I buy a fragrance?