Bairdyblog

Hard cell

You're sitting watching X Factor when your phone bleeps. Hey! You've got a text. That's exciting - an unopened text, like an unsigned Valentine's card, is ripe with romance and promise. Will it be from your best friend? A potential employer? The dreamboat who you gave your number to in that bar back in 2004? Curiosity gets the better of you. You open it.

And, bloody hell, it's from O2! Who want to tell you! That you could win! TKTS!!! for Take! That!!! at the O2!!! ARENA!!!!! You become just a little sadder still, and the increasingly careworn fabric of your optimism loses yet another, quite irreplaceable, sequin.

Which brings us to mobile marketing. Now, mobile seems to have been the next big thing for a very long time indeed. There are four reasons I can think of why it hasn't taken quite yet: the economy (naturally); concerns that  recruiters might actually be abusing an intimate medium; the reluctance of mobile service providers to sell much other than straightforward SMS technology; creative constraints in terms of content. Possibly, there's more.

So what can it be used for? Potentially, quite a lot, but generally recruitment has thus far limited itself to SMS response mechanisms. No-one (to my knowledge) has done much with MMS content distribution, bluetooth brochure distribution or location-based look-up (although this would be a wonderful application for any seriously multi-site employer, such as a large retailer). Nor has anyone done much in terms of web-to-mobile - combining two technologies on the one creative platform. But it can be done, as this striking effort from Orange in France testifies.

The biblical-looking chap pictured is Sebastien Chabal, half French rugby international, half behemoth. Chabal is a strong, scary man. And now he's decided to try his hand (foot?) at soccer. The film on the microsite sets up the scene, and then stops abruptly - you're asked to fill in your name and number. Then Chabal phones you to enquire whereabouts you think he should aim the ball; you tell him, and he does what you say. He scores, and in celebrating lifts up his shirt to reveal a message on his vest thanking you, and using your name.

It's all very ingenious. (Although I suspect the call from Chabal might actually be a recording, and you do have to give your answer via your phone's type-pad.) Bit like that Obama vid I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, but with more Gallic testosterone. Might not work without a French phone, by the way. But. Any ideas on how web-to-mobile could work in employment marketing?

Maybe in internal comms, you could have your CEO phone people to give more information on the new corporate values or a certain part of the organisational recovery package.

In a recruitment campaign, maybe the CEO could ask questions about a thing, and then you get called in order to give your answers? And when you get them right, the CEO takes his/her trousers off and shows YOUR NAME lipsticked on his/her underwear? Just a thought.

Incidentally, I first saw the Orange site mentioned on Adverblog.

And the best recruitment ad in the whole world is...

The RADs? Provincial. The CIPD/Guardians? Practically suburban. Fact is, every award ceremony in the world is Vauxhall Conference when compared to the superpower might of the Creative Excellence Awards.

The CEAs are the USA's premier rec ad gong-fest, made all the more interesting by their acceptance of entries from all over the planet. Those interested in world domination should note that the call for entries is now online: registration details can be found here, on their depressing sub-prime web site. Winners will be announced, with intermittent Yank nonsense about the nobility of our wunnerfull industry, at the Las Vegas Hilton in April 2009.

The CEA, allied to SHRM (the CIPD equivalent) has previously attracted entries from Canada, Australia, Singapore, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK, among others.  So you'd think it'd be a pretty good bash, right?

Nope. I've won a handful of these trinkets in the past and attended three of the ceremonies, and they're lower-key than a McCain-Palin election night party. Partly, they suffer because the standard of US work isn't as good as the UK's (or so I think - look through the portfolio pages of a few US agency sites and see if you disagree). But also because the ceremonies  are generally undersubscribed, have only an 'optional' requirement for black tie, are largely ignored by clients and, frankly, don't throw around anywhere near enough booze.

But maybe all that, the shonky web site and the trophies that lack a certain aesthetic something, doesn't matter. Where else, after all, can you get the chance to prove that your work is arguably the best of its kind, anywhere?

TMP won 53 of these things last year; Bernard Hodes did well too. (And, it being a US ceremony, the presenters always pronounce that name properly: Burr-naaarrd Ho-des.)

See Hodes' winning work and gauge the standard. Incidentally, I put the Dutch phrase off the Royal Dutch Navy poster into an online translator, and it's a knob gag.

Blessed are the Creatives, for they shall inherit the earth

Back from hols so finally catching up on what the luminaries have been on about on Ri5. Messrs Howard, Tarrant, Wilkinson and Gould all interviewed about the future of rec ad. (Any advance on that as a dinner party from hell?) No-one asked me, but I shall give you some thoughts anyway, and they are a little different.

As a circumlocutory introduction, watch this gem from The Onion.

YouTube Contest Challenges Users To Make A 'Good' Video

What this is about, of course, is deficiency of content. Hold that thought a moment.

Here are bairdyblog's predictions about the future of the industry.

1. Agencies, traditionally all about media, won't be for much longer: Four or so reasons why: clients won't need intermediation to post on job boards; social networking will develop, proliferating the 'free' attraction channels; fewer organisations will attract offline, where the commission value still lies; the recession may mean the collapse of volume rebates.

2. Content will be king. Content is what the clients can't do, where the value is. Clients will  increasingly look for agencies that understand brand development, the markets in which those brands operate, can produce whizzo creative platforms based on those brands, and offer sophisticated mastery of how to adapt content for online's myriad forms.

3. Retained accounts will become increasingly rare. Agencies will be hired on a project basis to build brands and deliver associated portfolios of attraction and engagement materials. Therefore, biz dev folk will probably be in demand more than ever.

4. These successful agencies will most likely be small affairs. One Account Director, a Biz Dev, a handful of writers and designers, programmers and channel analysts. Maybe a researcher if volume demands it. Many of these agencies will not be in central London: again, it's all about overheads. Some might even be properly virtual organisations.

5. Attraction will segue further into relationship management, induction, internal comms. We will be using our creativity to drive engagement and productivity, particularly.

6. George Takei will win IACGMOOH. His voice alone is too good to vote off.

Disbelieve if you dare.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a Contracts Manager in the Social Work department

You'd never have thought it, but things are sure hotting up in the Scottish job board market. If the recent revamp of S1 jobs weren't enough, here comes myjobscotland, the government portal for all things McPublic Sector. No, bear with me, please.

The site, which appears to have been built by Stepstone and written by someone with the attention span of a dazed haggis, promises much at the outset. Nice, we think when we read the intro. Public sector job marketing with a real understanding of how to leverage the concepts of worthwhile work and social value. We read about how we're to be introduced to 'superheroes' who work for local councils. We stare lustily at a humorous banner which, in good old Adam West Batman fashion, has ejaculations (look it up) in cartoony starbursts. YYESSSS, it says, with two Ys and four Ss. WOW! CLICK HERE. And we do, but that only takes us to George.

Now George is possibly an excellent solicitor. But a superhero he is not. He looks like the kind of strait-laced individual who gave up on Gordon Brown long ago for being a tad on the flighty side. Perhaps he allows himself a go at the crossword occasionally, but only when his shoes are polished and he's finished at the Presbytery. Read the third paragraph: bet you any money you need to read it three times over before it makes sense. Slowly the curtains are closing before your eyes, and you are being lulled into a deep sleep, like Greyfriars Bobby expiring on his master's grave.

So what's going on? It's clearly a massive creative non-sequitur, but there's more afoot. We're looking directly into the heart of the schizo nature of British public sector recruitment.

Public Sector ads are either great, or poo-pants, or both. At the top end you get the best briefs in the business. Coppers, firefighters, spies. At the bottom end you get semi-display ads for paperclip polishers in Bogbrushire Council.

The good are good for two reasons:

Firstly, public sector clients are less hidebound by brand restrictions. As recent victors of the Ri Fivers show, you can do nice full-image ads with funny headlines and original photography, which if you presented to the EB Manager of M&S would probably result in your getting a crate of Percy Pigs stuffed up your arse.

Secondly, this is where the emotive propositions are. Fight fires! Save children! Spy on baddies! Operate on orphans! And so on. (Although these emotive propositions only work when attracting people from outside of the job role. Firefighters don't want to hear about saving people: they know all about that already. They want to know about shifts, money and how long the slidey pole is.)

Anyway, myjobscotland should brush up its profiles.

Incidentally, regular readers may like to note that Innocent won the NORA award.

Who'd have thought.

Obama shows future of candidate management

Here's a jolly little viral created by Barack Obama's supporters, designed to get every last Democrat out voting on November 4th. It's not the first time we've seen the idea, but it does  surpass previous iterations in terms of impact, craft and wit.

It seems to me that this would work wonderfully in the employment marketing space:

• As candidate attraction, sent to email addresses of potential applicants
• As an automatic acknowledgment of application
• As a reminder to those who have only started, and not submitted, their online application form
• As a 'keep warm' during the assessment process
• As a pre-joining 'Hiring Room' or induction tool
• Perhaps best of all, as an employee referral tool sent to potential candidates by the referring employees directly

Like other technological advances in creativity, you can see this format having a novelty factor for the short-term, becoming 'passe' and then ultimately re-emerging on platforms that are increasingly subtle, engaging and flattering to the recipient.

The site which set up the Obama viral can be found here.