A lovely piece of digital art from the very talented Bård Edlund. Thanks to Angela Natividad @luckthelady for pointing us in Bård’s direction.  Beautifully hypnotic and it could be the difference between hitting your audience just at the right time or tweeting into space.

-   We’ve seen a 10% increase in perm roles across digital and integrated agencies when comparing Jan – Sept for 2010 and 2011.

-   The biggest increase when comparing Jan – Sept for 2010 to Jan – Sept  2011 has been in freelance roles which has grown by 100%.  At the same time day rates for contracts have come down.  The rise in freelance requirements this year is certainly in part being driven by economic fears meaning companies don’t want to make a long term commitment to perm hires.

-   We’re meeting more people looking for new roles this year compared to last with a significant increase in people looking for freelance.  The increased numbers of freelancers is one reason why rates are coming down but the fact more people are looking for new roles suggests a little more confidence in the market.

-   We’ve noticed an increase in mid-weight roles (£30-£40K) but having come out of a recession where agencies didn’t invest in grassroots talent there simply aren’t enough people in the market for the volume of roles.  Great news however if you are in the early stages of your career as there is lots of choice!

-   Agencies are still not investing enough in grassroots talent favouring hiring experienced people that have lower needs for training and support, perhaps this is amplified by the state of the economy and companies not making as much investment into their people.  But when you combine this with the increased restrictions on immigration we’re facing a real lack of succession and new talent coming into the industry.

To finish on a slightly more positive note; both perm and freelance roles show no sign of slowing down when we compare Sept 2010 to 2011.  This is  encouraging against the backdrop of doom and gloom in the global economy – the stock markets may be falling off a cliff and cash may get a little tight when Greece default but the outlook for digital talent remains high!

Brands are misinterpreting the meaning between a Facebook Like and real advocacy.

So much emphasis has been put on the almighty ‘Like’ these days, that it’s almost become an all out race for brands to get as many ‘Likes’ as possible.  There are even loads of tactics being used by brands such as ‘Like-gating’ for access to content or even incentivizing people with free stuff if they Like a brand’s page. After all, the more people that Like you, the more popular you’re becoming and the more likely they’ll buy from you.  And of course, this clearly means they’re actually advocating you as a brand, correct?

Not necessarily.  The problem these days is that many consider a ‘Like’ as a sign of advocacy.  But if you look at the actual definition of advocacy, it means the ‘active support of a cause or the act of pleading or arguing in favour of something.’  The key word here is active.

It’s not about how many people you can get to like your brand. It’s what you do afterwards to drive engagement & getting fans to do things with you.  Yes, a Like is important, but it’s only a first step.   It’s actually the doorway into bigger engagement with your fans.  But it’s just an an opt-in, although a very public one, and a ‘permission to speak, sir!’ It’s a few steps up from opting in to an email newsletter where some brands have given themselves the rights to spam their subscribers to kingdom come.  Nowadays, with a Facebook Like, a fan’s just stating very publicly that they’re allowing a brand to do so through the newsfeed.  And funnily enough, some brands are actually doing just that, seeing it as just another channel to pump messages through.  Pity the brand that pumps 2-for-1 deals and Tuesday specials to their fans because now they feel they have the right to.  Well, they’re ‘our fans’ right?

A Like really only means, “I’m happy for you to appear from time-to-time in my NewsFeed.” But the real hope from is “but if you happen to give me stuff or make me laugh and give me things I can share with my friends, then even better.”

A like is passive.  As mentioned before, advocacy is active.  A Like just gets us on the radar of a fan (amidst all the other things she really cares about and which is stealing away her attention).  But what what we’re really aiming for is a lot more active behavior from fans.  We want them to ‘do stuff.’  We want them to discuss, comment, engage with our content.  We want them to share brand experiences with their networks, hopefully influencing the behavior of their friends.  And at the highest level, we’d love for them to defend us when we’re not around to defend our brand.  But this only happens when we’ve managed to give a lot of ourselves to our fans.

A Like is a ‘hello, you seem interesting‘.  Advocacy is “you proved my instincts correct, I will introduce you to my friends.”  I guess it’s a bit like dating or even just making a new friend.  Someone can always pique our interests.  We find them interesting.  And we give them opportunities to keep proving us right.  They don’t go straight from the hello, to telling us how wonderful they are and if we fancy checking out their stamp collection.

A Like from a fan is actually a promise from us.  To like them back.  And we do that by thinking of what matters to them.  Engaging with them as real people who are sacrificing precious few mintues of their time to spend with us.  Make it meaningful.  It’s no surprise Starbucks have some of the most active fans on Facebook.  For a corporate monolith of a company, you’d think they’d have a hard time getting fans…and then getting them to stay engaged.  The reason is they are equally active back to their fans, they get involved.  And find ways to actively engage with them.

True advocacy starts when we start giving to our fans… being more generous, being engaging & useful.  The more that we do this, the more that they’ll be willing to be real advocates, being more active with our brand.

Yes, get them to like you first.  Be interesting, strike a chord, incentivise…even at times go for ‘Like-gating’ (with caution).  But  remember, the Like is really a promise from us…that we’ll be ‘liking’ our fans back…through engaging conversation, ideas, free (but not frivolously free) stuff, making them look better in front of their friends and anything that will make their lives slightly better or more fun.  Do that right and Likes eventually lead to advocacy.

@Samosaone

We’ll take a little break from Liam’s football posts now, to talk about the iPad.

The iPad was released here in the UK last week, and despite the media frenzy we haven’t seen many of them around these parts (we’re based in Shoreditch – where you would expect to have seen them!). We’ve also heard mixed reviews, some saying it’s just a larger (and much more expensive) iPhone which can’t make calls, whilst others say it’s the best thing ever, and the final nail in the coffin for the traditional book and magazine (and some even say, ‘it do telly’). What isn’t in doubt is that it’s a beautiful machine – it took all my willpower to not buy one based solely on its looks!

But how will the iPad effect digital? Well, if you are to believe Steve Jobs and the iPad does in fact replace traditional print media, then all print advertising would become digital – which would be bad news for Flash developers. But more likely than not, it won’t. Who really wants to take their iPad to the beach? Or risk having it near a swimming pool? Or, for that matter, on a night bus? The iPad is also extremely expensive, almost prohibitively so. The ‘basic’ 16GB Wi-Fi iPad costs £429, with the 32GB costing £499 and the 64GB £599. And you can’t even connect on the go. To do that, you’ll need the iPad WiFi + 3G, which costs £529 for the 16GB, £599 for the 32GB and £699 for the 64GB model – and then you still have to pay for your network data plan on top of that! One way around this is to buy the Three MiFi which offers up it’s 3G connection as a WiFi one for your wireless devices (tip courtesy of TechRadar).

So should advertisers rush to develop ‘iPad friendly’ ads? Or should they wait and save their resources until there is a mass consumer take up? Does this mean the end of Flash? Or the PC? Personally, I don’t think so. People will still continue to use their laptop PCs and MacBooks for work, but maybe more people who work and browse on the go, whose work is limited to spreadsheets and email, will use the iPad – whereas they would previously have used a small netbook.

Overall, the iPad is a very useful- and also a very pretty – piece of kit. And with the App Store, it’s only going to get more useful. Whether it changes the way we use computers however, remains to be seen…

]]> http://www.cogsagency.com/2010/06/some-thoughts-on-the-ipad/feed/ 0 http://www.cogsagency.com/2010/02/are-planners-social/ http://www.cogsagency.com/2010/02/are-planners-social/#comments Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:10:43 +0000 Chris http://www.cogsagency.com/?p=335 We are getting a number of requests from agencies to find planners that can write strategy, lead idea generation and then implement social media campaigns. This is a pretty wide set of skills! I’ve met a variety of ”social media planners” over the last couple of years and the backgrounds people come from are very varied….

• Digital strategists who enjoy working in social media but have a broader base of strategic experience with different types of projects; brand advertising, digital marketing etc

• People who have worked in social media agencies who excel in writing strategy but work in smaller teams where their remit is broader; account management, delivery.

• Self taught digital planners such as bloggers that have promoted events/products but on their own time and often not for big brands.

Who’s got the best skills for these projects? It could be any of the above, but a type of person I would really like to meet is a comms planner from a direct agency that is a prolific blogger, tweeter and facebook user in their spare time.

My thoughts being that a social media campaign is in some cases an extension of a crm program. With the tools and techniques available to derive data (and therefore insight) from the communications of social media + a lot of people out there that specialise in blogger out reach – surely an integrated planner who is digitally savvy combined with a digital copywriter could make a killer team!

Clearly there are lots of social campaigns where the plan to is to produce engaging and rich content and get this in front of the right people, this being an extension of brand advertising, but for those briefs where the strategy is more about ongoing communication I think an integrated planner could fit the bill.

My final thought on this topic is why there isn’t more social media strategy coming from integrated agencies………………..

Google did this piece back in November as part of their SearchStories series, but decided to run with it during this years Superbowl to reach a wider audience. A lovely story and one which, as the shy, retiring and often reserved George Parker put it

“..got to the very heart of what they are about and what they can do for you. A simple concise exposition of what it is that’s made them masters of the Universe. And unlike all that Bud shit, it didn’t cost them a fucking arm and a leg to tell the story beautifully.”

]]> http://www.cogsagency.com/2010/02/love-story/feed/ 0 http://www.cogsagency.com/2010/02/adland-the-movie/ http://www.cogsagency.com/2010/02/adland-the-movie/#comments Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:51:25 +0000 Liam http://www.cogsagency.com/?p=325

Entertaining promo for this years Creative Circle awards. By Mark Denton’s Coy .

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