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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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’ve always been aware that specialising in social media is not going to be special forever. But now Steve Rubel has spotted that Web 2.0 jobs are already declining and he says it’ll soon go the way of the blacksmith - once a big job area, now, not so much. (Although if all smithies looked like Russell Crowe I’m sure we’d find more use for them). But I’m personally not as freaked by this assertion as the first time I heard Charles Arthur say social media will kill off the PR.

The point where “everyone will be expected to know how to navigate the online landscape if they want to have a thriving career” as Rubel states,is some time off. There’s still a lot of digital education required and people needed to facilitate that learning, luckily for me. (BTW I also think PR will just evolve as comms specialists in the new digital landscape).

He’s right though in that the next generations of workers are naturally going to be more digitally focused. (more…)

…apparently. And, they’ve been handily labelled by InsightExpress as Mobile Pioneers, Mobile Wannabes and Mobile Traditionalists. I started thinking about the consumers behind the research. Below is my summary of the 3 types and my creative interpretation of which TV characters they might be.

Mobile Pioneers (15% of the market):

• Ahead of peers
• Uses advanced features weekly e.g. internet, unique apps, video
• Under-35, male and single
• 1/3 have a Smartphone
• Most likely to have thrown their mobile phone at someone or something
• Could be: Russell Owen from Hollyoaks. He fits the demographic and often seems to be both on his mobile and angry/stressed (could trigger a throw?). I’m not sure if it’s a Smartphone but generally other characters refer to how “smart” Russell is so I assume that would at least qualify him as ahead of peers. Russ was married but is currently single making him a close match for this category

Mobile Wannabes (25% of the market):

• Less than half are under 35
• Only 5% own a Smartphone
• Has tried some advanced features and would like to use them more
• Not as likely as the Mobile Pioneers to have walked into something while using device
• 30% of Pioneers had taken a picture of a product using their phone and sent it to someone to get an opinion
• Could be: Kitty Walker from Brothers and Sisters. Kitty is 39 so pretty much sitting on the age cusp of this group. She looks confident on her Blackberry but I’m sure would be interested to try more advanced features. Kitty asks her family about everything before she makes a decision, so I think she’d take pics and send them round the Walker family.  I still have an image of her as Ally McBeal so was troubled on the “walking in to things” criteria but think Kitty just scrapes in this category

Mobile Traditionalists (60% of the market):

• Most are over 35
• Mainly use phone for calls and texting
• Almost 1/4 have added ICE (in case of emergency) to their contacts list
• Could be: Dan Scott from One Tree Hill. He uses his mobile to call people and receive sinister texts from someone who knows he killed his brother (Dan thinks it actually *is* his dead brother texting him but I don’t think that qualifies as a mobile app). I’m pretty certain ICE would appeal to Dan as when he was having a heart attack his ex-wife threw his mobile at him and told him to call for help himself (N.B. If she threw the mobile could that class her as a Mobile Pioneer???)

[Via Mobile Marketing]

Digg it?

Ok, so it’s quite late in the year to be saying “check out these predictions” but I came across e-consultancy’s list of trends to watch out for this year and thought it was a great round-up of what people are saying right now.

Here’s the full list “Ten digital trends to watch out for in 2008“ 

And the ten are:

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