by Charl Thom. Early last year I shared some thoughts on advertising research and why I thought it was often a case of precious marketing dollars down the drain.
Tag archives: advertising
Crowdsourced recruitment hits adland as Hiring Bounty teams up with MarkLives
Agencies and marketing departments now have access to innovative crowd sourcing recruitment platform Hiring Bounty through its partnership agreement with MarkLives.com Careers.
Hiring Bounty taps into networks of friends to bypass recruitment agents and crowd-source candidates for positions in the marketing and technology industries. The sites gives a cut of the recruitment ‘bounty’ set by employers to those recommending successful candidates as well as the candidates themselves.
It incentivises friends who already know the skill sets of one another as well as important considerations such as culture fit and personality to recommend friends for jobs. It also incentivises candidates to throw their hat into the ring, since there is a cash pay-out for both themselves and their friends, should theirs be the successful application.
The service has already successfully landed hard to find candidates for companies such as Woolworths, Urbian and World Wide Creative.
MarkLives was the first to report the news of the recruitment start-up in June, and is pleased to be associated with a category disruptor. Here Greg Schneider, MD of Hiring Bounty, describes the business model and some of the success it’s achieved since its launch.
Google Is Blackmail
by Bob Hoffman (@adcontrarian) The way I see it, Google is a brilliantly executed extortion racket.
The key concept to understand is that Google makes its money through misdirection.
They get nothing for directing you to the most accurate search result. They get paid to artfully direct you away from the most accurate search result.
Natural (free) search takes you to the most likely thing you’re searching for, according to their algorithms. Paid search takes you to the person who was willing to pay the most for the term you are searching. It is misdirection.
They are very clever about this. If the misdirection is too obvious or egregious, you’ll lose confidence in them and search elsewhere. They walk a fine line, and are careful about just how much misdirection is acceptable.
The Gate Keeper: Chapter 21 (In which retirement is stage managed )
by Andrew Miller TBW Smith Jones Wallace Broadbent and Ndimande is an agency in crisis. Their ‘basket of boutique services’ strategy has bombed. Only a massive new project can keep the doors open – all eyes are now on the corporate tent at Mangaung. Far in the background, an emergency replacement executive PA with decades of experience makes important decisions. Interns rise, board members take unexpected steps and things begin to change…
The PR consultant is summoned, a charm offensive is planned and a deposit invoice is issued…
The Gate Keeper: Chapter 20 (In which careers are addressed)
by Andrew Miller TBW Smith Jones Wallace Broadbent and Ndimande is an agency in crisis. Their ‘basket of boutique services’ strategy has bombed. Only a massive new project can keep the doors open – all eyes are now on the corporate tent at Mangaung. Far in the background, an emergency replacement executive PA with decades of experience makes important decisions. Interns rise, board members take unexpected steps and things begin to change…
The intern’s place in the Mangaung corporate tent is debated, while the chairman of the board launches a hand grenade in no particular direction…
The embedded Agency
by Herman Manson (@marklives) The founders of ad agency Derrick, Livio Tronchin (ex-Jupiter Drawing Room Cape Town), Mark Stead (former CD at KingJames RSVP) and Myles Hoppé (former brand manager at the company behind the Joule), late last year packed up their office and moved in with the launch team of money management service 22seven.
The brainchild of Christo Davel, best known for his work on 20Twenty, the ground-breaking online bank that folded alongside Saambou, the Derrick team had been commissioned to move into the new start-up for a two week stint that made them feel like part of the start-up (and worked them just as hard!) rather than an agency apart.
22seven needed things to happen fast, in real time, and the procedures and processes in place at ad agencies was going to be a hindrance. So it all got tossed out the window. And while it was an exciting ride it did highlight vulnerabilities on both sides of the client/agency divide.
Amarula – the elephant in the global liqueur cabinet
by Herman Manson (@marklives) Amarula, the cream liqueur owned by Stellenbosch based Distell, has in recent years emerged as a global brand name that is achieving ongoing growth in numerous key markets including Brazil and Angola. Few consumers would guess that the brand launched in 1983 as a clear spirit with an alcohol content closing in on the 40% mark.
Distell was looking for indigenous ingredients with which to compete in a market which had just gone crazy for fruit flavoured liqueurs which ranged from strawberry to peaches to litchi. It picked the fruit from the Marula tree. The clear spirit was of middling success.
Six years later the cream liqueur we know today was launched. The lower alcohol content produced a softer taste and opened it to a wider audience. By 1991 it was being exported to the Netherlands and given an international brand focus. Today it’s exported to over a 100 markets.
Drinks International, a magazine devoted exclusively to the global spirits market, this year ranked Amarula as one of its fastest growing global brands at a time when rival Baileys (the biggest selling cream liqueur brand globally) experienced “sluggish growth” as did the number two cream liqueur brand De Kuyper which experienced a decline in its main US market. The Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay triangle makes up its second biggest market for Amarula after South Africa and is followed in turn by Angola.
The Gate Keeper: Chapter 19 (In which the road opens)
by Andrew Miller TBW Smith Jones Wallace Broadbent and Ndimande is an agency in crisis. Their ‘basket of boutique services’ strategy has bombed. Only a massive new project can keep the doors open – all eyes are now on the corporate tent at Mangaung. Far in the background, an emergency replacement executive PA with decades of experience makes important decisions. Interns rise, board members take unexpected steps and things begin to change…
The great Mangaung survival strategty is presented, and Mama E notices the chair of the board’s smile…
The Gate Keeper: Chapter 18 (In which lunch is shared)
by Andrew Miller TBW Smith Jones Wallace Broadbent and Ndimande is an agency in crisis. Their ‘basket of boutique services’ strategy has bombed. Only a massive new project can keep the doors open – all eyes are now on the corporate tent at Mangaung. Far in the background, an emergency replacement executive PA with decades of experience makes important decisions. Interns rise, board members take unexpected steps and things begin to change…
Things begin to change as the TBWSJWBN hierachy is suddenly and decisively subverted…
The Gate Keeper: Chapter 17 (In which things fail to come to a head)
by Andrew Miller TBW Smith Jones Wallace Broadbent and Ndimande is an agency in crisis. Their ‘basket of boutique services’ strategy has bombed. Only a massive new project can keep the doors open – all eyes are now on the corporate tent at Mangaung. Far in the background, an emergency replacement executive PA with decades of experience makes important decisions. Interns rise, board members take unexpected steps and things begin to change…