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Our world through a lens
23 Nov2011
In one of these mails about a year and a half ago, I mentioned an ambitious project that was being undertaken via the internet. The project, called ‘Life in a Day‘ was an attempt to capture a normal day in the life of the world. Rather like a digital time capsule.
Participants who wanted to enter were asked to film themselves on 24 July 2010 and in particular, respond to three questions: “who do you love?”, “what is in your pocket/handbag/purse?” and “what do you fear?” The resultant footage would be edited by The Scott Brothers (of Alien fame) and produced by Kevin Macdonald.
In one of the most successful crowdsourcing exercises of its time, over 80,000 people from 140 countries submitted responses and 4,500 hours were selected to be edited into a 94 minute film, which was premiered at Cannes earlier this year.
The result, which was aired on BBC2 last night is an utterly compelling insight into modern life and I would recommend that everyone takes the time to watch it.
Aside from being impressed at the quality of some of the submissions (the role of consumer as content producer is a conversation for another day) it also got me to thinking about how we articulate what it is like working for companies and whether this style of approach would be worth considering as both an employee engagement exercise and as recruitment material. Food for thought…
Facebook vs the Internet
There were numerous themes being discussed and debated at yesterday’s IAB Engage conference, but for me one of the most interesting was an off the cuff conversation around Facebook. The question being debated was whether Facebook was trying to become the Internet.
Think about it – the Internet, whilst effectively controlled by the companies that maintain the infrastructure (carbon fibre pipes, connections etc.) is an open source mechanism; anyone can use it in a (reasonably) unregulated manner free from traditional constraints. Whilst this has often caused issues for governments, businesses and advertisers, as they try to find some way to regulate how it is used, it has also presented some great opportunities, as normal people have collaborated to come up with innovative and life-chaning new products, services and concepts. Facebook, on the other hand, is a closed ecosystem, meaning that one company has complete control on how it is used, managed and what is done with the information that it gleans.
Whilst the ramifications of this continue to be mulled over by far more intelligent people than me, my thought was simple. When presenting any media plan, should we treat Facebook as a channel in its own right? In other words, should FB activity be on every media plan, distinctly separate from press, out of home, digital etc.? It makes sense – 20% of the worlds population is using it, any activity on FB gives us direct access to a mobile audience (over 50% of smartphone usage in the UK is on Facebook) and we can be incredibly specific in our targeting. Hodes is using Facebook in increasingly inventive ways (see our latest work for Gazprom) and have some successful examples that we can showcase.
I suppose the other way of looking at the same question is, given its size and scale, why haven’t we been treating it as a separate channel?
It’s been a while…
1 Nov2011
As our ‘beloved’ Andy Hyatt is MIA today I’ve taken up the mantle of the weekly Digital Friday Mail. For those who have just joined (or have never received a ‘Friday Mail’), this is intended as a weekly digest of links and topics that have been of interest to the digital team this week.
The LinkedIn vs. Facebook discussion has been a hot topic for a while, and one that will continue for months (and probably years) to come. What’s made this even more interesting is that this week saw the launch of the Facebook Social Jobs Partnerships. A joint venture between Facebook and the US Dept. of Labor, “The partnership will explore and develop systems for delivering job postings virally through Facebook at no charge.” Some speculate that this will eventually lead to “Facebook destroying Linkedin”. Even if true my personal opinion is that we are a long way from that… In the meantime LinkedIn is maintaining its cool, with co-founder Reid Hoffman stating that ‘Facebook isn’t competition’ at the San Francisco Web 2.0 summit.
Involved in presentations? Then chances are you probably already have a list of data sources that you ‘borrow’ from. Mary Meeker is one of Silicon Valley’s foremost Venture Capitalists and championed very early on companies such as Microsoft, Google and eBay. Her presentations have become legendary and a veritable source of data for anybody working in the digital world. Her latest can be found here . Well worth a read and well worth ‘borrowing’ from.
China (and Asia) cannot be ignored any longer. At some point you will probably be involved in a project that will involve working with clients/partners in this region, as I have been in the last few weeks working on ABB. This site is a great resource for anything related to digital in Asia in general. Ogilvy has also created a handy guide on the equivalent sites of Facebook, Foursquare or even Google in China, which can be found here.
Finally, I thought I would feature Hypem. A site which is creating quite a buzz. It takes music posted on blogs around the world and indexes it in a nice readable format, for everybody to rate and vote for – as well as to listen to. A great way to discover new music…
It’s been a while since I last penned a Friday mail, and while there are plenty of reasons as to why this is, events over the weekend have now forced my hand. Last week, saw a few events take place which merit a deeper exploration and a better understanding. Google finally released a beta of its socially-enabled services, called Google+, Monster released its competitor to LinkedIn – BeKnown, and LinkedIn shut down its API, blocking access to its data. I’ll go through each of these in detail.
Google+ a socially suitable successor to Facebook?
Ever since Facebook started to gain traction within the collective global consciousness, Google has tried to jump in on the action. Its first foray, a service called ‘Buzz’ was deemed a disaster and served to reinforce the growing belief that the team at Google didn’t really ‘get’ social media. Last week, however, Google launched its newest venture, a social network called Google+. And the feeling is that this time, Google has done something right.
Google+ is a social network. As with many social networks, it requires membership to get the most out of it. Unlike many social networks, you can still participate if you are not a member.
There are a whole host of services on offer – users can capitalise on many of Google’s existing products and services in a manner that facilitates social engagement. For example, increasingly you will start seeing the +1 symbol on Google search results pages. This is Google’s equivalent to ‘liking’ something. Google+ users have unlimited storage on Picasa, which is a piece of image editing software that allows users to store, share and more importantly edit images. It also has face recognition, but I’ll come to that later.
You will probably hear a lot about ‘circles’, which is Google’s way of allowing users to associate an individual with a particular group. For example, one circle may be ‘family’, one may be ‘work colleagues’. Depending on how granular you want to get, you may also have a circle called ‘drinking buddies’, or ‘people I met at Tom and Marie’s wedding’. It is possible to get as granular as you want and also, allow one person to be attributed to lots of different circles. Its pretty intuitive and more importantly, you can specify very clearly what group is allowed access to what information.
It’s all very clever stuff and as I spend more time over the coming weeks, you’ll probably hear more. For now, it is worth noting simply that Google has launched a credible competitor to Facebook. With Facebook starting to lose numbers, it is worth paying attention. There are however, a couple of things to bear in mind.
There is a fear that Google+ allows Google to be even more intrusive in our lives. Google wants to be all things to all people, and, no, this is nothing to laugh at. Google continues to build the largest computing infrastructure on the planet, but still manages to generate large amounts of liquidity. At the end of March 2011, it had more than $36B in cash. Google is extremely capital efficient.
The other concern is about how Google use the information that a Social Networking product will provide. Google’s one and only goal is to sell advertising. The path to this goal requires ‘radiation pressure’: Google wants to make sure we don’t escape its ads. It wants to insert itself into all aspects of our lives, to find out as much as it can about as many aspects, activities and relationships as possible. And Social Networking is about as pervasive as it gets.
Do I think that this will stop people from taking up its new offering? Yes and no. Yes, because Facebook is falling out of favour with many and people are starting to look for a credible alternative (which Google+ provides); no because Google is already a behemoth with a staggering amount of information. We tend not to like it when organisations or people have too much power. On top of this, I’m expecting Governments around the world to wake up to this and to start talking about monopolisation, data integrity and security.
Social Networking and Recruitment
Social networks are powerful recruiting and job seeking tools. The $120 billion corporate recruiting industry is being transformed (and upset) by LinkedIn because the system is such a powerful tool for recruiters to find passive candidates. People in the LinkedIn network maintain their profile actively, giving recruiters a real-time, highly accurate database from which to search and contact candidates.
And the growth of LinkedIn has dramatically impacted many of the big players in this market. Executive recruitment firms like Heidrick and Struggles, Korn Ferry, and Spencer Stuart are losing the value of their proprietary executive networks. Mid-sized recruiting companies are seeing big companies develop more and more expertise in the use of social networking internally. And large job boards like Monster.com, The Ladders, and others are seeing job seekers (and recruiters) move their money and energy toward LinkedIn.
That’s not to say that LinkedIn is the only professional networking tool out there. Nor is it to say that the more innovative agencies, like MDH, are doomed to fail. It is simply outlining that the speed and voracity of social recruitment has caught a lot of people off their guard.
Monster finally joins the game; LinkedIn responds
Last week Monster threw down the gauntlet with the launch of BeKnown, a new Facebook application that aimed to become the professional social network for Facebook users, and a vital new tool for recruiters, human resources, and talent acquisition teams.
Monster wasn’t the only recruiting provider to use Facebook – for example, a product called ‘Branch Out’ has been around for a while and recently been gaining traction – however, it is certainly the biggest.
The use of Facebook, however, was perceived as a real coup. Whilst LinkedIn has an estimated 100 million users and is growing at a rate of nearly 3 million per month, there is an entire world of Facebook users who do not use LinkedIn (yet). Facebook, with more than 750 million users, taps into a broader audience who uses the network for different purposes.
Now, and here is where we come to the interesting bit; any social networking product or service requires a critical mass before it become effective. Monster had hoped to circumvent this by using LinkedIn’s API to allow individuals to upload their LinkedIn contacts to BeKnown. LinkedIn, recognising the threat that this posed, simply shut down its API.
It’s a clever move, despite being criticised by many in the industry. With a single keystroke, LinkedIn has forced Monster to actually go through the difficult process of creating its own network, which takes time and effort and will act as a barrier to take up by many individuals. It has prompted a huge debate about data ownership and also gives LinkedIn time to consider a response.
Expect a LinkedIn Facebook app to arrive imminently…
- In: Friday Mails|General thoughts|Recruitment
- Tags: Google
Friday Mail: Feel the Force
15 Apr2011
I’ve received a few mails from the team this week with some interesting sites, which is fantastic, as it helps reinforce our view that good ideas can come from anywhere in the organisation. I’ve attached a link to a couple of those I thought might appeal to the collective sense of Fridayness. Then I received a mail from Tom. It’s engaging and passionate and shows that as well as simply looking for interesting stuff, we need to think about how it can apply to the world in which we work, so I’ve put it in verbatim. Well done Stephen, Andrew and Tom, for keeping the flame burning!
Pleasure Hunt My Magnum
Since the heady days of Magnum’s shocking introduction to the heavily traditional world of ice cream, their campaigns have continued to push boundaries. Literally.
The world’s biggest PacMan
A Ronseal site. What more can I say?
“I’m sure you’re going to say you have already seen all this years ago and I’m so behind the times but I was so impressed I wanted to share it with you regardless. I’ve been exploring all the digital recruitment stuff from the Swedish armed forces and its amazing. I remember we featured some social stuff they have done in that GSK prezi so I expect your aware of the work. They all make use of amazing SFX too.
http://forsvar.fileflat.com/english/
This feels like a really cinematic and immersive environment, using really clever stereo soundscapes, and encompasses various tests and mind teasers that are all really addictive and innovative. It feels a bit like a big budget version of the KPMG mind gym.
http://rekryt.mil.se/english/
This one is a stylish and clever way of sorting through job roles using filters to find your perfect role based on role, environment, and tasks, in varying degrees of interest and intensity and practicality.
http://team.forsvarsmakten.se/english/
My little brother came to me talking about it and said him and all his friends have been playing on it, which is pretty amazing. It involves four random players logging on to the environment, then they test your team work skills by making you perform tasks that need four people to complete. My brother says the most impressive thing is that you all can see each others screens as you all play, meaning you can help each other and collaborate in real time.
These are just three that I’ve found recently and I don’t know if the same agency did them all but it shows what a brave client and a creative agency can achieve, without the massive budgets that that ‘Start thinking Soldier’ campaign had.
Reminds me that recruitment marketing can still be amazing.”
- In: Friday Mails|Interesting sites|Recruitment
- Tags: Armed Forces, Magnum, PacMan, Swedish Army, UGC
For those of you who are unaware, this week saw the inaugural launch of an exciting new initiative, sponsored by our very own Future Talent team. Graduate Answer Time is a series of debates based on the Question Time format that brings together key figures from the graduate and Higher Education sectors to address some of the biggest issues facing graduate recruiters today. The inaugural event, held on Wednesday 6th April at Vinopolis was chaired by Channel 4 news presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy and seems to have gone down a storm. In testament to the industrious efforts of Cathy, Caroline, Karen, Cassie, Helen and Alex I thought to dedicate this week’s mail to the relatively new phenomena of peer-to-peer information sharing that is a staple amongst students and graduates who are desperate to get on the career ladder.
Enjoy!
A
An industry oldie (by virtue of being around more than a year), Glassdoor is one of the most popular P2P review sites on the web. Users can anonymously comment on the organisations they work for (or have worked for) giving advice to senior management about how things should be improved – a useful pulse survey for firms and researchers alike. They can also post their salaries and questions that were raised during interviews. Whilst this does raise a challenge for recruiters, levelling the playing field in terms of salary negotiations and making it difficult to get under the skin of the people they are interviewing who have had plenty of time to pre-prepare responses to questions they are likely to be asked, my view is that this should ultimately be a good thing. I’m curious as to what will happen to Glassdoor – will it become just another job board, or is it a hot prospect for a takeover. My suspicions say the latter, as the content it owns is far too valuable. Time, as they say, will tell.
A new contender on the block, the Job Crowd sounds curiously similar to an award winning TV comedy. However, the content and features it contains are no joke. Targeted at graduates and early stage workers, there are plenty of articulate and useful reviews about a range of jobs and industries, with added features like ‘Similar Reviews’ (akin to Amazon’s ‘People who liked this also liked’ feature) and a surprisingly large following. The business model is nice too, as every review added generates a donation to the Shaw Trust, a leading employment charity.
The brain child of a couple of entrepreneurs from Loughborough University, Rate My Placement has been firmly establishing itself as THE favourite contender for Graduate advice. Its business model has it working closely with employers, careers advisors and university placement officers, generating input from students that will hopefully provide real-life insight into what students and graduates can expect from working in a company. With competition forcing employers to start the engagement process earlier and earlier in the student lifecycle, it is easy to see why this site continues to do so well. It’s first-hand knowledge and experience of the student placement and internship process, aligned with a dedication to relevant, up-to-date, student generated content that has allowed RMP to identify and fill a growing gap in the market and understand the needs of our users and clients. Another hot prospect for takeover.
Talking of early stage recruitment, I thought to take a look at an early stage P2P site that allow students to rate teachers and schools. Rate My Teacher is an intriguing prospect although I’m curious how long such content will be allowed to be posted without accusations of libel and slander (reading today’s news about Google being successfully sued for the way that its search algorithm can place negative words next to an individual’s name is a stark reminder). However, the site does have plenty of content and uses Facebook ‘Likes’ to extend its reach across multiple channels. As a parent who is seriously considering about investing in education, it is reassuring to see that some teachers can still generate a hugely positive response.
Finally, I saw this site and had to post it as a great example of opportunistic capitalism. Faced with a throwaway society, where having the latest toy and gadget affords children playground status and a consumer cycle where ‘latest’ can now be expressed in months and weeks, rather than seasons, it is no wonder that an exchange marketplace has risen, phoenix-like from the ashes of a discarded toy mountain. Stork Brokers is a trading exchange for parents who want to get some vestige of value from barely used toys. It’s similar to eBay with more targeting and a much better moniker.
Just some random musings and sites today. Enjoy.
A
Adobe Museum of Digital Media. A cool and interesting idea where a museum dedicated to Digital Media is developed entirely online. You have to play around with it, as it’s a bit odd. If anything though, it will remain etched in my mind for moment of epiphany by an ‘architect’ from Goodby Silverstein & Partners (the ad agency behind the idea) when he and the team find out that “this was the precise moment when we realised that doing something virtual wasn’t that easy…”
Some of you may remember the TED winner JR from a few mails ago. He’s back and with a vengeance for his newest project, Inside Out. In his words, “INSIDE OUT is a large-scale participatory art project that transforms messages of personal identity into pieces of artistic work. Everyone is challenged to use black and white photographic portraits to discover, reveal and share the untold stories and images of people around the world. These digitally uploaded images will be made into posters and sent back to the project’s co-creators for them to exhibit in their own communities.” Quite.
Can’t remember if I featured this in previous mails or not, but this is a nice idea from a Japanese band, that has just been voted a finalist in this year’s SXSW: an interactive music video that gets customised every time you view it depending on your personal data and social networking status. You sign up using Facebook, Twitter and a webcam but for those of you who don’t have (or want to) connect via Facebook, you can see the non-connected version here.
As described by Russ, totally pointless but cool site for a Friday.
And lastly, a fun mashup that allows you to search the Creative Commons images on Flickr according to colour.
Just some random musings and sites today. Enjoy.
A
Adobe Museum of Digital Media. A cool and interesting idea where a museum dedicated to Digital Media is developed entirely online. You have to play around with it, as it’s a bit odd. If anything though, it will remain etched in my mind for moment of epiphany by an ‘architect’ from Goodby Silverstein & Partners (the ad agency behind the idea) when he and the team find out that “this was the precise moment when we realised that doing something virtual wasn’t that easy...”
Some of you may remember the TED winner JR from a few mails ago. He’s back and with a vengeance for his newest project, Inside Out. In his words, “INSIDE OUT is a large-scale participatory art project that transforms messages of personal identity into pieces of artistic work. Everyone is challenged to use black and white photographic portraits to discover, reveal and share the untold stories and images of people around the world. These digitally uploaded images will be made into posters and sent back to the project’s co-creators for them to exhibit in their own communities.” Quite.
Can’t remember if I featured this in previous mails or not, but this is a nice idea from a Japanese band, that has just been voted a finalist in this year’s SXSW: an interactive music video that gets customised every time you view it depending on your personal data and social networking status. You sign up using Facebook, Twitter and a webcam but for those of you who don’t have (or want to) connect via Facebook, you can see the non-connected version here.
As described by Russ, totally pointless but cool site for a Friday.
And lastly, A fun mashup that allows you to search the Creative Commons images on Flickr according to colour.
Laugh and the world laughs with you…
4 Mar2011
Usually writing a mail about innovation is simple this time of year, as our imaginations about the ‘next big thing’ are fuelled by the technical wizardry that is on display at the world technology fair (known as CeBIT). Unfortunately, this year sees a multitude of variations on the tablet theme, alongside numerous pontifications from the gaming industry about the next versions of the PSP, so I’ve been forced to look further afield. So I’ve opted for some useful stuff, some topical stuff and some fun stuff. Enjoy.
Creatively, it is always nice to keep an eye on new and engaging formats, so we turn to a couple of sites spotted by Steve Lo Presti: Media Mind (aka Eyeblaster) run a blog which allows users to look at a wide range of differing advertising formats. In the spirit of openness and collaboration, they helpfully provide the code for these, too. Atlas also runs the Atlas Institute and download centre which can be useful sources of information.
Lego announced big profits this week, fuelled by the success of the strategic decision a few years back to develop bespoke Lego sets as part of movie franchises. The fact that Lego has seen a resurgence amongst adults (10% of Lego purchasers sit within a category known as AFOLs (Adult Fans of Lego)) has also been a great help. Anyway, Clone Wars is the current hot trend, so this site is quite fun to play with. Watch out for ‘Cars’ which, according to my 6 year old, is the next big thing. Oh, and by the way, I came across this site, which seems to be an interesting set of musings on Gen Y, Kids Culture and Community online. Worth a peek.
Finally, Charlie Sheen has recently broken the Guinness World Record for the fastest person to reach 1 million followers on Twitter, achieving this dubious honour in just over 25 hours (at the last check, he was standing at 1,489,036 followers) Socially irresponsible? Or just an age old human tendency to laugh at someone else’s misery, whilst taking comfort in the fact that it isn’t us? I’ll let you decide.
Just for fun
• You are Not a Photographer – a vitriolic commentary on ‘professional’ photography shots
• City Forward – a mashup from IBM that allows users to delve deep into the detail about their city
• Red Bull Street Art – a collaborative collection of sites using Google Street View that showcase street art from around the world. Mashups, crowdsourcing and Urban Graffiti – so hip, it hurts.
• Language Development Live – a bright spark at MIT has charted the development of his child’s language acquisition from birth to the age of 5. It is a fascinating insight into the human brain (especially for anyone who studied psychology). Watch out for the TED talk when it is released.
- In: Friday Mails|General thoughts|Interesting sites
- Tags: Atlas, CeBIT, Charlie Sheen, Eyeblaster, Geny Y, Google, IBM, Kids, Lego, Mashup, Red Bull, Street View, Twitter
As the #TRU London unconference draws to an end, my thoughts turn to what I have learned. This was my first ever unconference and whilst day 1 followed a slightly more established footprint, with most speakers using some form of PowerPoint slides to begin with (much to the chagrin of some of the unconference hardliners), the next few days were much more freeform.
For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, an unconference is an event where the content and subject matter is driven by the participants and attendees. Typically sessions are facilitated conversations around themes, as opposed to formal presentations and the audience is actively encouranged to contribute, challenge and criticise.
The anarchic nature of the sessions took some getting used to. Tracks could be organised, re-arranged or changed on the fly to suit the whim of the audience. Or the speakers. Attendees came and went freely in the midst of sessions in an never-ending quest for more compelling discussions. Bloggers tweeted furiously. Audiences panned speakers with equal parts vitriol, intelligence and humour. Friendships were made, timetables vaguely adhered to.
As one became more comfortable with the format, the quirkiness and lack of formalised structure started to appeal. The lack of sales pitches meant that the no time was wasted on information that added no value; the ability to engage with and directly challenge speakers (and other audience members) allowed for a much deeper investigation of the core issues than you would normally expect; the ability to move freely within tracks meant that track leaders learned pretty quickly about their ability to engage an audience.
This last point might sound cruel but it’s actually much more logical than it seems – audiences pay good money to attend these events and they don’t pay money to suffer poor presenters. Rather than receiving feedback weeks after an event has finished, running multiple tracks at the same time allowed attendees to move to where they felt they were getting the most value and forced speakers to up their game. As a facilitator, it’s quite unnerving and very un-British, but it helps you focus on changing the direction to suit the audience needs at the time.
So, what themes arose? Here are a few (and there are plenty of jounralists who will have picked up many more, so it’s worth checking the #trulondon twitstream)
- whilst some employers are using social media, they still seem to be using it as a channel for push communications, as opposed to actively engaging with candidates. Those organisations that have implemented social medai recruiting campaigns (e.g. ITV and Staples) discovered that the candidates and hires were of a much better quality. They also discovered that they needed to rethink about how campaigns were manned, as many took place outside of working hours.
- There is a vast amount of confusion still about the rules of engagement – on behalf of employers, recruiters and candidates. Too much of the rule setting is based on assumption. It would be great to see someoe, somewhere place a flag in the sand.
- Tactical recruiters are a dying breed. There needs to be a paradigm shift in the service that recruiters offer candidates (e.g. interview training, personal branding, reputation monitoring etc.). And having seen the number of successful recruiters here, I’m sure that many are already doing so
- People still think about recruitment in classical terms (i.e. organisation posts job, candidate sends CV, interviews etc, are conducted) Very few people seem to have thought about how to overhaul the process to make it better
- The people who (appear) to be driving the industry forward are the recruiters, the job boards and the agencies. There was a disappointing dearth of clients here and these are the people who really should be involved in (and dare I say, shaping, such discussions.
So, many thanks to Bill Boorman for organising such a great event. If you haven’t been to a #TRU I’d definitely encourage you to do so. And if you take my advice, then leave your inhibitions at the door…
Friday mail (the short one)
14 Feb2011
Four sites, all which caught my (or the team’s) eye:
Thinking Space from the Economist – nice flash site which gives you access to the collective brains of prominent planners within the advertising world.
Chrome Experiments (view in Chrome) – a selection of sites and games which are used to test what you can do with JavaScript and a Chrome browser.
Markup – allows you to review and comment on web pages by creating a URL which can then be sent to clients to comment back on. Great interactive tool, especially for Usability Reviews.
True Life Costs – the latest (award winning) site from Volkswagen aims to show you that spending (sorry, investing) more in a Volkswagen that, for example, a Peugeot is a good thing. “To see the big picture you need to look beyond the one off purchase price.” Exactly.
Told you I’d keep it short…