Grapevine Consulting

Ever been out of work and had the old stat 6 of 10 jobs are not advertised quoted at you? It used to not feel  true but social media is starting to show that stat in action.

Over the past few months I’ve seen:

• BIMA recruiting for a PR via Twitter
• ShinyRed recruited a grad placement via The Official Facebook Public Relations Group
• Jobs sent out via my contacts on LinkedIn
• PRBlogger advertising a digital AE via his blog

Those are just the ones I can think of right now. Ignoring the obvious “what if they see my drunken pics on Facebook/MySpace”  hype which hopefully everyone has a handle on now, I’m wondering if social media communities are going to replace the recruitment agency?

Social media just provides the tools to tap into your own or others’ networks which were harder to mass broadcast to before Web 2.0 technologies.

Working your community:

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A little knowledge… makes this a funny thing.

[Check out more funny cartoons at Geek And Poke]

The Blackberry Women and Technology Awards were last night and I wondered how I totally missed this tech event. I didn’t even spot a random Tweet about it this morning.

A quick scan of the official site revealed, disappointingly, that perhaps this wasn’t the techiest event of the year. The nominees and winners hadn’t even been posted 18 hours after the event began (an age in online news terms).

This got me thinking about the benefits of this type of brand association with an event. It’s not a bad idea at all. If you caught the Saatchi & Saatchi ‘Lady Geek’ research last year you’ll have seen there’s a huge missed opportunity to market technology to women (around £600m worth).

So I did a rudimentary Trendpedia search to see who might be “owning conversations” around women and technology. First off I scanned through a quick Google search to see if there were any stand out brands in this space. There weren’t so I just used:

• Blackberry: A product like the Pearl was squarely aimed at women. I also wondered how an event like this was giving them ownership of ”women and technology” conversations
• Philips: Last year I was lucky enough to work on their Aurea campaign which, via fashion partnerships with the likes of Lanvin and media spend in Vogue, should’ve brought them into the female tech consumer conversation
• Saatchi & Saatchi: With their research I wondered if the brand had gained a presence in these types of discussions. I also thought it would provide a realistic contrast against the other two brands.

The search terms I used were [brand] AND women AND technology.

The results:

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I don’t think I’ve put podcasting high enough on my radar. Part of the problem is that I’m not someone who listens to the radio, but I realise I’m in the minority with 51% of people identifying themselves as regular listeners. So, are podcasts just a fad? Will voice just be surpassed by video or vodcasting?

On the video front, while growth in the digital space is rapid I reckon the desire for audio only will always remain. It’s a similar behaviour to choosing to put on a CD or watching music videos. Sometimes you just want to listen to something. 

There’s great growth potential for podcasting. Radio has been an enduring medium, even with the advent of digital technologies, and I see the podcast as simply providing a form of “on-demand radio”. Uptake may be slow, but awareness is growing, suggesting that podcasting suffers from the same challenges as on-demand TV services; if good content exists, it’ll just take time to ensure the delivery model is in place and help the consumer adapt.

I didn’t attend the ‘New TV Insights from Thinkbox’ event the other week but they dropped me a note to point out they have a load of useful downlaodable content on their site. I’m getting particularly engrossed in their Generation Whatever section which has research and presentations on how marketers can target the “yoof” audience.

Also visit the beautifully titled ‘Nickable Charts’ section which has all the facts and figures on TV audiences you could ever wish for; your next powerpoint presentation will thank you for it.

Thinkbox resources

Just a quick reminder that Internet World is taking place at Earls Court this week 29 Apr - 1 May.

I was probably a bit too excited when just now they sent my very first mobile ad to plug the event. It arrives as an MMS, you click play and it pops up on the screen for about 10secs or so with a bit of blurb. I guess the novelty will wear off.

Exciting developments at We7 [a ShinyRed client whose account I formerly worked on]. Today sees the new Sony BMG music streaming service going live.

While it isn’t yet ready to go head-to-head with services like Last.fm it’s positive to see a major label  take its first steps into ”free” music provision. Although it looks like the delivery, via live streaming only, shows Sony BMG is not on board with We7’s DRM position.

This is diplomatically expressed as:

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I don’t watch Grey’s Anatomy but that doesn’t mean I’ve missed all the hype around “Dr McDreamy” also known as Patrick Dempsey.

Sandrine Plasseraud spotted this great campaign advertised on Facebook. Go to the site, upload a photo of yourself and voila - it’s yourself stood next to Dempsey. As Sandrine says, it’s less fun when you select the “Share on Facebook” option and then see your mug is replaced with the official movie image again.

In the name of research I created a bit of McDarika for you

[pic is from last year's Xmas party, sporting my secret santa gift]

A few weeks ago I wrote a post which picked up on Steve Rubel’s assertion that certain Web 2.0 jobs are on the decline. He’s now written a follow-up post looking at which digital jobs will be on the rise.

To prove his point on the importance of a Chief Customer Experience Officer he’s set up a google search demonstrating how customer service is paramount to managing online repuations.

For fun I typed in the universally griped about British Gas; here’s some telling results from the first page:

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I freely admit I am not a “blogger’s blogger”, a quick scan through this blog reveals meandering conversations, typos, and grammatical oddities which would prevent me claming to be an expert on writing blogs. 

But, I do chat to blogging newbies asking what they should write about when they start out so I wanted to direct you to Chris Garrett’s excellent post on Engaging Readers, complete with handy diagram (I love visual representations like this).

Chris is a blogger and internet marketing consultant and, if you’re a brand looking for someone to create content for you, he’s a blogger for hire. (I’d love to get his take on Ghost Blogging and find out how he works it)