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February 15, 2006

Wanna see a great recruiting site?

Ogilvy Graduate Recruiting hires a group of 15 graduates each year and gives them an 18-month "360 degree" experience of Ogilvy's business in three different areas.

Sounds like an excellent training program. But why would a top new graduate want to join forces with Ogilvy instead of another great advertising firm?

Well, according to the site, Ogilvy....

- is thinking bigger than every other advertising agency
- will make you one of the best trained graduates in the industry
- you'll get to work on more brands than with other training schemes
- Ogilvy's training is recognized as the best in the industry

Is that enough to make you choose Ogilvy over the competition? For some, perhaps... but these claims are pretty hard to quantify aside from pointing to industry magazines, word-of-mouth, or testimonials from (most likely former Ogilvy) advertising professionals and/or clients...

So why does a graduate choose a new employer? Let's look at who they are...

Today's graduates are made up mostly of a generation being called the "Millennials" (born between 1980 and 2000). In an excellent article by Claire Raines of Generations at Work, called "Managing Millennials", this generation will bring an entirely new and radically different approach to their careers.

According to Raines, their characteristics include:

- Confident
- Hopeful
- Goal- and achievement-oriented
- Civic-minded
- Inclusive

She went on to list 6 Principles of Millennial Management

1. You be the leader. This generation has grown up with structure and supervision, with parents who were role models. The “You be the parent” TV commercials are right on. Millennials are looking for leaders with honesty and integrity. It’s not that they don’t want to be leaders themselves, they’d just like some great role models first.
2. Challenge me. Millennials want learning opportunities. They want to be assigned to projects they can learn from. A recent Randstad employee survey found that “trying new things” was the most popular item. They’re looking for growth, development, a career path.
3. Let me work with friends. Millennials say they want to work with people they click with. They like being friends with coworkers. Employers who provide for the social aspects of work will find those efforts well rewarded by this newest cohort. Some companies are even interviewing and hiring groups of friends.
4. Let's have fun. A little humor, a bit of silliness, even a little irreverence will make your work environment more attractive.
5. Respect me. “Treat our ideas respectfully,” they ask, “even though we haven’t been around a long time.”
6. Be flexible. The busiest generation ever isn’t going to give up its activities just because of jobs. A rigid schedule is a sure-fire way to lose your Millennial employees.

What does all of this have to do with the Ogilvy site? Well, I think it's a great recruitment site because it speaks directly to this generation. It combines a lot of talk about what Ogilvy is and how serious Ogilvy takes its business. It dispells myths about the experience of working at Ogilvy, and it does so from the perspective of the graduate. It is not a bunch of corporate speak about "Our organization was founded back in.... we are one of the largest and most reputable... blah blah blah"

In fact, what they did was turn their graduate recruiting site into an almost "reality" style blog of life at Ogilvy from the perspective of the graduates. They spend equal amounts of time talking about the myriad brands they get to work on at Ogilvy and the big names they get to sit around the boardroom table with. Which helps the goal-oriented, ambitious prospects see that they will not just be at the bottom of the food-chain. It also shows the personality.

An excerpt from one of the entries called "What Ogilvy isn't"

"It's not just another grad scheme. This won't be six weeks of dullo training then being left to fend for yourself. You'll get to work in three different communications companies in 18 months which will make you the best trained graduates in the communication business. You won't be on your own either. There'll be fifteen of you (gotta like those odds) which, if it's like my intake will mean a lot of laughs, always someone to have a drink with at the bar (did I mention the office has a bar?) and plenty of embarrassing stories.

If you'd like to find out more about these embarrassing stories (and see the photos) please feel free to have a good look around. All the bits and pieces are written by Ogilvy graduates so you should get a pretty good feel for what it's all about. Apparently this is working life..."

Unlike professional candidates, graduates have two questions they want answered when they visit an employment site...

1. What is it like to work for ___________?

and

2. What is it like to work, period (full stop, for my UK readers)?

Ogilvy's site is so great because it answers both and has fun doing so...

A study by Y2M: Youth Media + Marketing Networks polled 1500 college graduates about their job searching habits and found that 7 in 10 of them (69%) posted their resume online, citing major job boards like Monster, HotJobs and CareerBuilder as the places to post their resumes in increasing numbers over the last several years (2002-2005).

So if they are all going to the Web to find their next employer, what will your site say to them?

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 07:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Interactive Marketing has gone to the dogs...

This entry on a TBWA blog shows a campaign by Tequilla Holland for Pedigree dog food.

The post is simple, the message is clear:

"Dogs love Pedigree

In contribution to World Animal Day this outdoor promotion was developed especially for dogs. A sticker, in the shape of a dog barge, forms the promotion. The sticker was placed on floors in front of pet shops and supermarkets. And it has something no dog can resist: the scent of delicious Pedigree dog food!

The dogs went nuts! The dogs' ownsers couldn't pass by without buying something from Pedigree for his dog."

Talk about a targeted Interactive marketing strategy. This is absolutely brilliant!!!

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 07:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 08, 2006

The importance of content...

My former employer made an announcement last year to all of its employees that we were in the age of "attention" where someone's time is their primary currency. Most of the recent thought leaders in the world of Marketing and Advertising have said that the world of Advertising has changed completely and that we will no longer be able to "interrupt what people are talking about" but rather BE what people are talking about.

Design, creativity and relevance have become critical components of communication moreso than ever before, and the playing field is being leveled as the average person (with a computer and Internet access) has the ability to broadcast their message to the entire world. Emails, Websites and now even video and audio are as easy to distribute across the globe as they are to create (and they are becoming so easy to create that the major media companies are freaking out).

You can now view/listen to advertisements on your TV, on your computer, on your cell phone, in line at the Supermarket, on the bus/train, in the airport, on the plane as well as on a wide range of new devices that have become part of the "toolkit" for survival in this modern world.

There are more and more ways to reach people and yet, the advertising industry seems to be shrinking. The net effect of all of these new communication channels has actually been more control for the recipient. In addition to providing new ways to reach people, the technology has provided new ways for people to ignore your ads. We don't have to rely on the "mute" button during commercials anymore, we can simply skip them. If we don't want to receive calls from telemarketers, we simply add our name to a "do-not-call" list. We can easily (in theory) unsubscribe ourselves from emails that we don't want to receive, and we can also block ads from making their way into our Web browsers. All to an extent, of course as there always seems to be a way to break through the limitations if an advertiser really wants to (look at porn).

So what is the real effect of all of this on the advertising and communications world?

Tim Hespos, who writes articles on MediaPost's "Online Spin", published an article on February 7th called "The End of Watered Down Content." According to Tim, the marketplace has chanced because people now have the "ability to unshackle content from time, place and manner restrictions."

To Tim, "[people] now value content according to how entertaining and/or information-rich it is, on a granular level. This leads to our picking and choosing the elements of the experience we wish to preserve, and what we wish to remove."

Media companies no longer control content, that's in the hands of all of the millions of people with computers, Web sites and podcasts.... ideas. So the whole idea of a "publisher of content" being able to, as Tim put it, "give you something you want" in exchange for giving you something you don't want while they have your attention, is supposedly over... as now people simply forego the something they don't want and (usually illegally) download only what they want.

On some level this may be true, but this relies on the average person being able to produce and deliver content that someone wants without any money. Let's not forget that the reason big media companies have been able to command the world of content delivery for so long is because they have had the money. Sure, some of them have made money purely on the value of their content alone, so there will always be space for someone with a really great idea, or story, to tell it. And the audience for this has just become truly global. But the production of that story had better be relatively cheap. Podcasts are a great example of this. If you've got a few hundred dollars, you can purchase a computer, a microphone and download some free audio recording/editing software that will allow you to create your own audio content that you can then publish via iTunes. But what if your story requires visuals? Well, now you've got to make a bigger investment...

Distributing your own short film may be free, thanks to the Web (not including the costs of your ISP) but making it will require more resources. Say a Digital Video Camera, video editing software, more hard drive space and more RAM for your computer. Does your story require set production? Actors/actresses? Better sound quality? Now you need more money? Who do you think pays for that? Big media companies have the budget for this kind of thing because their content is valuable... who is the content valuable to? Advertisers... ultimately somewhere, someone knows that they will recoup the costs of producing the content through various advertising and/or marketing channels. Media companies resell the rights to their content to other people that want to distribute it, the "distributors" recoup their costs by collecting money from advertisers that believe that the people watching this content are also people likely to purchase their products. The specific model that exists currently may be changing... the places where content is viewed may be changing, time is no longer an issue, I can download "Lost" and watch it anytime I want to.

I can review the Football Championship Game (not sure if I can refer to the Bowl game that happened last Sunday or not) or just the commercials that aired during the game at my leisure... but it's still not "free." An article in the New York Times mentioned that something like 23 million AOL customers downloaded the aforementioned commercials on the Monday after "The Big Game" ... for "free" but all 23 million of them had to watch an ad while the download was occurring. All 23 million of them obviously felt that this was a worthwhile exchange and the advertiser, who paid money to have their ad running during the download would likely agree. But if you're looking at the world of advertising and saying it's changed vastly... I might argue that not much has changed.

Instead of sitting in front of your TV on a Friday night watching "Dallas" on for "free" CBS and voluntarily subscribing to some :30 second spots in exchange for the content you want, you now download the content from the Web and voluntarily subscribe to some form of Web advertising (if not immediately, you gave them some information about yourself that will most likely be used to advertise to you later) while your download occurs. In some cases, you may be subjected to MORE advertising than you did before.

Tim Hespos said "the media business no longer controls the packaging" and on one level, I understand his point. The days where you'd go to the record store and buy "Vanilla Ice's greatest hits" for that one song you liked back in the day are over. Now you just go to iTunes, pay $.99 and get the one song you want. But on the other hand, if you look at the successful internet models, I'd argue that big media are still in control of the packaging. AOL is in the media businesss and they controlled the packaging for 23 million people that wanted to see the TV commercials, all 23 million of them saw an ad for a Time Warner produced TV show.

Can you legally download good content without watching an ad? Sure, you go to iTunes or Google Video and pay a nominal fee to get the "non-ad" version. But you're probably still seeing an ad for something... it might be a small text ad on the sideof the page, or it might be an ad for another tune to download... but it's still an ad... and it wasn't even free.

So the old adage of "we'll give you something you want, in exchange for giving you something you don't want while we have your attention" will still live... the place to be is still on the team that's creating the content in the first place, and if you have the ideas that appeal to the whole world, chances are somebody with something to advertise will want to give you money for your content.

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 02:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack