Take email marketing.  Look at the two images below. The one on the right is the mail as it was meant to be seen, with all imagery and content in its visual glory; the one on the left is the mail as I received it in my inbox. The job posting itself (a ‘Dynamics AX Project Manager’ for those of you who are  interested) is obscured within a barrage of unnecessary imagery. Even more frustrating is that, other than the job post, all the other copy within the mail is unnecessarily obscured from view by being buried within images. So if, like me, you receive gazillions of mail and consequently tend to have images switched off, the mail simply doesn’t work.

This is basic stuff and does nothing to alleviate my, or my clients concerns that sites like these are managing either candidates or client postings with due care and attention. Which is frustrating because these sites CAN be very effective.

I’ll not even mention the fact that I switched off the email alert after the last Monster security lapse, so have no idea why it has been switched on again…

IBM Smarter Cities
Data is the new black. Apparently. So the clever bods at Ol Big Blue have been trying to find ways of articulating how the intelligent management can help make our lives better. And I think they have done a nice job here.

Nikon Festival
Nikon is running a competition to get more pepole using their cameras. Or phones. Or whichever particular devices that they use to create videos. Anyway, the idea here is that you upload a lovely video (maximum length 140 seconds) and then use Twitter to get people voting on what a great video it is (see what they have done there?) The winner gets £25K. It’s a simple idea, simply presented that relies on two things to be successful: greed and our desire to be recognised. I think it could work.

Monster tie in with Microsoft
I was seaching the Office website for interesting plug-ons and add-ons and noticed that Monster seems to have created a tie in with Microsoft to get people who are using Office to create their resumes to upload them to Monster. One of those very simple ideas that’s a win-win for both Microsoft (who get value-added content) and Monster (who get access to a much broader audience). Why didn’t we think of that?

Easy Tweets (https://easytweets.com/)
Our folks in the States Facebooked about this.I haven’t had time to explore it fully, but from what I understand it seems to be a tool that allows our clients to control multiple twitter accounts, but also to track their brand reputation. If any of you get a chance, I’d love to know what you (or your clients) think.

Steve Jobs demonstrates the Apple Macintosh in 1984
“Insanely great.” Oh how far we have come…