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.

As tee’d up earlier this year, the results are in from Heather’s annual survey. As always, a top job and huge thanks to Heather for undertaking this. Some great information here for budding planners and old hands alike. Fill your boots and look out for the survey link next year.

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.

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.

In response to a press request via headstream (who I also do digital planning goodness for in my role at LCG), I did this. So I thought I would share it.

FriendFeed

What is it?

FriendFeed is a new web 2.0 service that enables you to aggregate all of your, and your friends, online activity and conversations in one place.

How does it work?

It uses RSS feeds to pull in the information from a wide (and growing) number of sources and places them in one feed so you can see everything in one place. RSS means that FriendFeed will be scalable in the future as you don’t need developers and open access APIs to create new content, RSS is the common standard for sharing information across the internet.

Why should I care?

The atomisation of the web means that users have pockets of information fragmented all over the web. Just think about a regular person who watches, favourites and maybe posts a few videos on You Tube, puts their family holiday snaps on Flickr, comments on a blog they read daily, shares links from their Google Reader. Multiply this by a blog you write, the comments on that blog, the links to it, tweets on Twitter, Facebook updates, de.licio.us, digg and stumble upon tags. And then multiply by the number of friends you follow and the fragmentation and amount of this information becomes overwhelming to the point of overload.

FriendFeed helps that by aggregating all that information in one place so you don’t have to traverse 5, 6, 7, 8 + websites to keep in touch with the information. It helps you stay on top of what’s grabbing your friends’ attention and keeps you connected. You also get full control of the people you follow and can un-follow at any time.

And because it’s all RSS enabled, you can distribute that content to where you want it: Google Reader, your personal homepage (iGoogle, MSN Live etc.).

But I’ve only just discovered Facebook!

It’s true that FriendFeed is pretty much used by the early adopters at the moment and true that you would have to again subscribe to/follow friends which is a chore. But the benefits of having everything in one place for those who currently suffer web 2.0 overload are worth it. There’s even a feature called “imaginary friend” where you can pull in a feed of someone who you want to read – a thought leader perhaps – but you aren’t their actual friend. This overcomes the limitations and annoyance of Facebook where you do actually need to know people.

In summary

FriendFeed gives you control over the web 2.0 noise and lets you consume it in a way that is relevant to you.

Add me as a friend

More bedtime reading:

http://friendfeed.com/about/

http://scobleizer.com/2008/05/18/why-friendfeed-wont-go-mainstream/

http://scobleizer.com/2008/05/18/why-friendfeed-will-go-mainstream-part-ii/

Also posted on the Interact European Congress blog where I am a collaborator.

UPDATE 03.06.08

My input helped to spawn this article in NMK where I get a quote. I think Tim Hoang did a great job on the article. One to send to mum to try and explain what I do.

“The atomisation of the web means that users have pockets of information fragmented all over the web. Just think about a regular person who watches, favourites and maybe posts a few videos on YouTube, puts their family holiday snaps on flickr, comments on a blog they read daily, shares links from their Google Reader. Multiply this by a blog you write, the comments on that blog, the links to it, tweets on Twitter, Facebook updates, de.licio.us, digg and stumble upon tags. And then multiply by the number of friends you follow and the fragmentation and amount of this information becomes overwhelming to the point of overload,” said Nicholas Gill, planner at headstream PR.

“FriendFeed helps that by aggregating all that information in one place so you don’t have to traverse numerous websites to keep in touch with the information. It helps you stay on top of what’s grabbing your friends’ attention and keeps you connected. You also get full control of the people you follow and can un-follow at any time,” continued Gill. “FriendFeed gives you control over the web 2.0 noise and lets you consume it in a way that is relevant to you.”

Also posted here on the headstream blog.

I love this. A fantastic example of user generated content. Dare are doing some cool stuff for Sony right now. I see myself using this as an example in future “digital wtf?” sessions.

Who’ve you got a grudge against? Shout it here. I enjoy the retro feel of this.

Awesome business cards. Does what it says on the tin.

Amazing stunts without photoshop trickery.

Google broek? Or Google domination? You decide. (via @MusaAykac)

A new ezine that “prompts the positive, kindles the constructibe, highlights the hopeful and leaves you feeling… well, up.” (thanks to Mel Ferguson)

Email marketing has surprised me of late.

Maybe it’s because I’ve had the fortune to work on and develop some class-leading CRM programmes in my time but I figure that if you want to be the best, you adopt best practices. And for me, double opt-in is the way to go. I remember spending several meetings and design iterations later to re-word and re-art direct positive opt ins for digital communications for Diageo to be ahead of the curve and live best practice, not just tip a hat to it.

So I was somewhat taken aback to read in eROI’s Cradle To Grave report (there’s no direct link, click on quarterly studies and download the report) that only 30.69% of US companies are using double opt-in. That’s tantamount to spamming if you don’t use that method.

And worse, 59.4% of those companies don’t pass an unsubscribe to other parts of their company when they get one. Two yellows equals a red card! So if you’re a consumer, basically a friend could get you signed up, you receive emails, you unsubscribe and you get them from another part of the same organisation. Aaargh. That’s just not joined up thinking and hardly going to endear your consumers to your brand.

Closer to home in the UK, econsultancy report that one in three companies flout spamming laws with only financial services boasting 100% compliance with email rules.

When you consider that European consumers receive over 250 emails per week (35 average per day) is it any wonder that 38% use spam filters, over half of promotion emails get deleted without reading and more people are concerned by clicking on ads in emails than on banners? The top two reasons people unsubscribe are irrelevant content and overly frequent emails.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. We just need to up our game and practise what we preach. Don’t let the standards slip and do it the right way. Because if we get it right, consumers do love email.

Consider this information released by eMarketer today. 67% of US adult internet users prefer companies to contact them by email than any other method. And in 5 years time, 67% will still prefer email to any other communication.

Remember, email is a conversation too.

Also posted on the European Interact Congress Blog where I have been invited to collaborate on the blog.