Bairdyblog

Too much money makes bunny unfunny

Have spent the last couple of weeks doing employment marketing work, and I'm sick of it. So let's leave the world of sits vac for a while and look at this campaign for - deep breath - Cadbury Dairy Milk Caramel.  

For those of you who don't get it, this is the Caramel Rabbit who used to promote the chocolate bar back in the eighties. (When, as I recall, the name of the product had only one adjective, and not three.) So this is, essentially, a nostalgia opportunity for those of us old enough to remember the original - as evidenced by a couple of media commentary sites with men of a certain age hur-hurring each other about whether or not Caramel Rabbit is tastier than Jessica Rabbit.

And it's everywhere. It's on buses. It's wrapped around the BFI IMAX. It was the cover on thelondonpaper last Monday. Small children are having it stapled to heads and being paid to parade around the West End wearing it. Next week, when I go to hospital for an X-Ray, I fully expect to see a copy of it pinned to my large intestine. It's everywhere.

Model-wise, there are significant changes. La Rabbit is now wearing make-up. I suppose this is intended to make her look like a sexier older, thing - twenty years on but well-preserved in a male fantasy type way. (I imagine the lads working on this talked about RILFs when they drew her.)

Annoyingly, the adverts are carrying the 'A Glass and a Half Full Production' logo which I suppose is meant to be - um - the branding of the branding. This is an unforgivable sin and must be stopped immediately. It speaks volumes about the agency and marketing types behind this kind of work, strongly suggesting they're attempting to promote their own 'craft' and 'talent' above actually shifting product.

And look at the site - despite being much-lauded, am I really alone in suspecting the work isn't actually that good? Airport trucks and creepy pre-pubescent eyebrow artists? I'd expect that from Mark Wallinger but don't find much justification for it in a brand campaign. For chocolate.

Anyway, my main point was that the Caramel campaign almost has too much exposure. Here's how it worked with me. The first time I saw it I thought it was clever. The second, I possibly felt a slight stab of nostalgia.

The third, I realised that there was some connection between the image and my distant, adolescent awakening.

But the fourth time, I'm slightly bored by its lack and creative development, and even worse - I'm associating the rabbit and the chocolate bar with a whole world of zits, physical discomfort and sexual rejection. Hmm - is this what the people at 'Glass and a Half' had in mind?

Downward spiral? It's a great employer brand attribute

On Monday, a new office space opens in Sheffield. Called the Electric Works, it's for media-related businesses, and its claim to fame is a helter-skelter that runs right through the middle of it.

Quite a big helter-skelter, in fact. It goes down three storeys, which is a 40ft drop, which in helter-skelter terms means 87ft of, in this instance, steel and transparent plastic.

Yes, it's a gimmick. But I love the way they've tied it into the 'values' of contemporary media business. Designer Toby Hyam apparently refers to it as a 'statement on risk-taking'.

Those of us who are in the business of advising on, or growing, employer brands will know that nothing communicates messages better than this kind of innovation. People talk about it around water-coolers. Newspapers report upon it. And every time the story is told, something is communicated about your organisational values.

It's like the woman who flew in from Benidorm every week just to work at ASDA; the desks at Amazon that are made from garage doors, just like the original Jeff Bezos used when he first set up the business; the donations Microsoft made to charity if people didn't exceed normal working hours.

Can't see many of these being developed in the current climate - but afterwards, the ability to dream them up and implement them will be a profitable tool in employment marketing.

The one with the CIPD and the dirty girl

There's an episode of Friends in which Ross, enchanted by a bobby-dazzler of a blonde (Cheryl) accepts an invitation to go back to her apartment. But as soon as she opens the door he realises the relationship is screwed. Chez Cheryl is a terrible mess. There's crap and vermin everywhere.

Of course, what's happening here is that the writers are using Ross's dating life as a metaphor for the disparities between an organisation's candidate attraction and candidate relationship materials. (Obvious when you think about it.) What they're saying is this. The attraction stuff is often very slinky, charming and sexy - more than enough to get you through the door. But once on the inside, in the imperfect and slightly stained world of candidate relationship materials, things begin to look very different indeed.

Candidate relationship materials - aka 'downstream employer branding' - include job and people specifications, letters of invitation/regret/hold, interview areas, assessment centres, online testing and offer packs. And all these are usually crap for a couple of reasons. One: most decent people in HR think the management of these materials is beneath them and two: HR clonk-heads often assume that when the candidate has applied they don't need to be sold to anymore.

CRM has historically been an additional income stream for the better rec ad agencies - re-working anything within it that isn't consistent with the employer brand or fails to promote the EVPs. I once (once) worked with a retail client who completely got it right by asking us to re-write everything including their most basic application form, to ensure that the language within it was consistent with the copy directives laid out in their new employer brand paradigm.

Anyway, now the CIPD Recruitment Marketing Awards in partnership with The Guardian has latched onto the candidate relationship management piece and is offering a new award for best practice in the area.

This is laudable in theory, but, CRMAIPWTG judges, I can't help but feel that unless you take a great deal of care, this will lead to a pedestrianisation of the awards, which should  essentially be about marketing. So by all means give an award to an assessment centre or application process that shows marketing flair and uses creativity to generate better results for the business. But if you find yourself talking about the comparative value of psychometric approaches, feedback loops which helped reduce interview drop-outs and other technical HR yada, hopefully you'll just put those entries into a big envelope and post them directly off the Personnel Today Awards where they belong? 

 

Ads suggest online market has some way to go

Anyone who's a fan of American football, or Cheezhead, or both, will have noticed that prime advertising real-estate night of Superbowl saw the two big US job boards attempt to twat each other around the heads with big, expensive adverts. These were, of course, efforts from Monster and Careerbuilder. Here's one of a series from Monster:

And the one ad from Careerbuilder:

Of course, both have good things going for them. The Monster ads are well produced, witty and arguably could (that's could) strike some chord with the dissatisfied worker. The Careerbuilder ad has a catchy rhythm to it and a healthy dose of iconoclasm. (And it's always nice to see something Antipodean getting punched in the face.) But - oh, dear. What are the underlying messages telling us about the maturity, or otherwise, of the job board market?

Well, it's telling us that market is still prepubescent. Why? Because none of these ads are attempting to differentiate their products in the marketplace, but seeking to grow the marketplace itself. A strategy not usually - ever - associated with market maturity.

What Monster and Careerbuilder are telling us is that if our jobs suck then don't worry - we can find another one by looking on the internet. (Admittedly the Monster ad has some differentiating messages squeezed in at the end, but this isn't where the main creative energy lies.) They're not assuming that the market knows this and is at the comparatively sophisticated stage of working out which online platform to use. (This is the equivalent of Volkswagen running an ad that says: 'Hey! Ever need to get from A to B? Then why not consider buying a car?' Or maybe The Sun running an ad suggesting that people who don't know what's going on would be better off buying a newspaper.)

This isn't the Big Boards fault, of course: I'm sure they've done their research and know to an inch where the markets stand. But it does rather suggest to me that the idea of the western world now entirely consisting of discerning on-rec consumers is complete arse-talk.

Finally, here is one job board  ad that does attempt to differentiate. But does it work? I'm slightly puzzled by the fact the little monsters are um, little Monsters - is the suggestion of Trumposaurus deliberate, do you think? More importantly, where does the viewer's sympathy lie at the end - with the little monsters or the big one? All v.v. confusing.

2-4-6-8, who will hire a grad-u-ate?

About twenty years ago, I graduated into something of a downturn. Whilst my economic circumstance was tricky, it wasn't catastrophic. I got three months work with a local firm of painters, washing walls. When that finished my friend Martin and I tried writing comedy for pin money.

We didn't sell much - we weren't that good - but the university careers magazine gave us £100 quid for a batch of cartoons about how terrible the graduate recruitment landscape was. I remember they printed one in which a man opened the Guardian and a Media Jobs supplement fell out, which was only the size of a postage stamp. Not the best gag in the world, but it did earn us a tenner, which at the time was enough to buy about five pints, each.

Looking at the Sunday Times this weekend, I got the feeling that the situation for grad recruitment is bad right now but not the end of the world. Vacancies seem to be down about 17%, but then median salaries are up to £27K. (Aldi are paying £40K, plus a car.) Things in Japan are similar, if this report from Reuters is anything to go by. (Thanks to John Langford for sending it in.)

Basically, the Japanese colleges are holding rallies and hiring cheerleaders to inspire students on their path toward employment, and the rallies look something like:

Perhaps some employment marketing entrepreneurs with a grasp on grad recruitment over here could find a new revenue stream by turning the tables: asking the educational establishments to pay for creatively-led sessions in which willing grads are taught properly how to apply and interview for those remaining plum jobs?

Boats left alone on choppy waters

I had brunch with an old work colleague last week, who's now a senior director at a well-known employment services firm. He was talking about a recurrent image that comes into his head whenever he sees the launch of a new recruitment web site.

In that image, the client and the project director are carrying the new web site, in the form of a toy sailing boat, carefully down to a pond in the park. They gently put the boat into the water and let it sail towards the centre of the pond, where it becomes just one amongst hundreds of similar boats, and then the client and the project director turn their backs and walk away.

This, let me explain for the hard of thinking, is about the fact that most recruitment sites, once launched, are simply not managed or updated. At all. (Well, maybe there's some 'Hot Jobs' button, but that's it.) This is particularly bizarro now - the economy is going to hell in a nuclear-powered handcart and no careers site appears to have noticed.

As I write Radio 5 live are reporting further closures at lumbering entz emporium Zavvi. Today's news will mean another 295 job losses. But what's this? The careers site is still wittering on about 'growth both in-store and online'. (Hmm - that'll teach 'em not to build job sites in Flash.)

A random sample of the week's other casualties show similar stories. Barratts the shoe store - actually in administration - is still blithering on about a 'fast growing multi site retailing channel'. (The absence of hyphens is their error, not mine.) Thames Water (300 job losses) and Corus (3,500) don't seem to have bothered to update their recruitment messaging either.

Ulster Bank tells us: 'Our ambition is to be the Number One banking group on the island of Ireland. We're not there yet but we're progressing fast along our journey.' It also stresses the organisation's believe in work-life balance: with around 750 of their jobs about to go, I'd suggest the balance is definitely tipping towards the life rather than the work side. (Funny picture on that site, too - perhaps the girl on the parapet is thinking of jumping.)

So, what can we learn from this? That web sites need editors and need to be updated. And if you carry on spouting rec ad platitudes in times of grief and pain, how can you expect candidates to take you seriously at, well, any time?

Are there any careers sites out there that have directly addressed recession, possibly by contextualising redundancies in their organisation or even by adding content about how they, and/or their industries, are particularly resistant to downturn?

Cryptic Crossword, Answers

Did you try the crossword? Ah, but you should have done. Anyway, here are the answers. (The hidden phrase was 'credit crunch'.) The lucky winner has asked that the £50 prize go to the NSPCC.

 

Return to the real

I shan't bang on about the RADs. There's been plenty of coverage on Ri5, Digital Recruiting and MyLongLunch, etc. I shall, however, briefly cast an eye over the winning entry from Work Communications for the National Graduate Development Programme (NGDP).

 

It's a pretty parable, with much to recommend it. The voiceover is by Josh, a management trainee himself, and is, given his amateur theatrical status, surprisingly un-selfconscious. The sound - often overlooked with this kind of thing - is thoughtful and well-produced. The animation itself is witty and zippy throughout. (I particularly enjoyed the neighbours resignedly tossing their speech-bubbles in with the rubbish, and the way the little fellow goes all cross-eyed when the tenders go into his head.) 

Admittedly, parts might not be to everyone's taste - I didn't really need the 'war' footage metaphor and the site beyond the film seems a little sparse.

Looking at it from a wider perspective, I also believe that this film is representative of a new (ish) trend in employment. To borrow a phrase from a commentator referring to - what else? - the Obama era, this trend might be might be called a 'return to the real'.

What does that mean? That the new vogue in employment will be for jobs which employees understand, and can properly comprehend the positive consequences of. In other words, jobs where you fiddle around with obscure financial or technical products, and can't really explain to your grandmother, will be out of fashion.

Carpentry and child-minding, for example, will be the new bond trading and systems integration. People will more happily embrace occupations which are lower-tech, more local and have more of an obvious, tangible benefit to their communities.

Why? A host of well-documented reasons. Environmentalism says we shouldn't travel too much. Threats of global terrorism suggest we should enjoy our families and communities while we can. The recession has brought with it distrust for the people who invent spurious, almost meaningless products for personal gain, the effects of which have blighted entire industries.

To bring it back to NGDP, hedge funds will be less important than hedges on bin-yards.

'Real' has long been one of the most abused words in the employment marketing lexicon. 'You'll get real responsibility from day one', 'a chance to make a real difference' - have all made us want to upchuck at one time or another. Perhaps with the NGDP and their 'Real Life, Real Work' camapign the word is beginning to be rehabilitated.

You only sing when you're working

I was in the pub with Melanie Hirst from Aussie shop ReAgent last week, who reminded me of this oddity from Ernst & Young, which did the email rounds a few years ago.

Clearly, it's an artefact from days long gone, when HR departments were prepared to drop squillions on projects with no discernible practical benefit. But it's by no means an isolated example - the web is full of comparable misdemeanours. Spend ten minutes searching on YouTube and you'll find it hard to believe that the heads of E&Y, KPMG and PWC were not consciously vying with each other to discover who could make their organisations look like the biggest bunch of complete tits.

Corporate anthems - bad lyrics, bad synths, bad performances, great entertainment. You can find a load of them here. There's an OK piece of web journalism on the truly aw-ful/-esome KPMG song here. (I like it best when the funny foreign man says 'innowate' and 'wision'.)

I wonder if anyone ever held an international contest for corporate anthems? I imagine the irony quotient in such an event would have made Eurovision look like a state funeral.

Anyway, years before the internet, TV and dogging were invented, organisations would often encourage their workforces to star in industrial musicals. On this page you'll find an example written for Xerox employees in 1963. It's wonderfully produced and tremendously evocative, as you can probably guess from the album sleeve.

In our over-cynical world, laden with work-life balance, Gen Y professional promiscuity and the alienation of distance working, this could almost certainly never happen. But doesn't it make you just a little nostalgic for a better, more secure world; a time when men were company men, and practically all employees enjoyed the notion of a job for life?

It's a boss of a web site

Most of you will have seen it already, but it's worth putting on record what a pleasant thing studo recruitment telly-fest Here Comes The Boss actually is.

In particular, I'm enjoying the Hanson TV slots where site bossman Hanson, a puppet with a delightfully quirky sense of humour, gets up to all sorts including (in this instance) allowing Neil Harrison from TMP to spout on about employer branding. (Presumably Neil didn't tuck his shirt in to demonstrate just how down with the kids they are at TMP Towers nowadays.)

 Anyway, things that HCTB does well:

• An original site persona and tone that gives it real stand-out. The funnies are just on the right side of alternative to not alienate the big corporates or the more serious-minded of students.
• An intriguing breakdown of barriers between editorial and paid advertising - the spots where Hanson is interviewing the Enterprise Rent-A-Car mob are much fresher than any over-produced corporate schlock might have been.
• The site actually looks quite pretty.

There are some things that rankle: the writing on the business feeds could be better (there's a difference between 'new readers start here' and patronising - 'Rolls Royce Win Big Piece Of Work' is clearly the latter). And there are usually a handful of typos that one assumes should be picked up by elementary spellcheck. But generally, HCTB is probably the bossest of the grad sites right now.

Its heavy use of video raises some issues of interest to creatives. Firstly, how do you grab attention in the first ten seconds? (I find myself clicking on the next link, as with YouTube, unless something grabs me immediately.) And similarly, how good are we - really - at writing for broadcast? There's little doubt that recruitment is increasingly a broadcast medium, and perhaps, when this crunch thing becomes more of a light gnashing, we'll see more of an influx of broadcast-literate creatives in what remains of our leading agencies.

Whilst everyone else is predicting what might happen in the year ahead, I'll go one further. The RADs 2010 Best Employer Web Site gong will be won by what is effectively a TV channel, where the home page is a weekly-updated news desk, and incisive, non-flabby streamed content will be effortlessly available on both online and mobile platforms. And it'll be fronted by Philippa Forrester. Probably.

Happy 2009. Hope you don't have reason to use the 'New Year, No Career' gag anytime soon.