I’ve been enjoying the entertaining farewells to 2011. Videos, memes, and pretty much anything digital. But I think the more important part of any happy new year reflection is gazing forward at 2012. I won’t detail my theory on the future of agencies in general, or give advice like this. Instead, my crystal ball shows very clearly the immediate future of my own agency. Because — as with any business based on talent — our fate is clearly written in our open job opportunities.
PLEASE PASS THE LINKS BELOW ON TO SUPER SMART, NICELY AMBITIOUS FRIENDS. While the specifics are all about H+K Strategies 2012, I truly think you’ll find this list serves as an accurate prediction of the marketing and communication industry as a whole. Happy New Year.
Stay with me after the jump, or go straight to the job specs:
Launching the world’s first snore absorption room; creating the world’s biggest shave; reinterpreting art with technology; revealing the best place in the UK to bring up a family… As 2011 draws to a close, we take a look back month by month at some H+K Strategies campaigns and work throughout the year.
January: City & Guilds Million Extra
You're hired: Karren Brady+ City & Guilds' Chris Jones
To start the new year, preparations to launch City & Guilds first ever Apprenticeship Summit went underway early on. The aim of the campaign was to help ensure one million Apprenticeship starts by summer 2013.
In January, we commissioned a report to identify the barriers employers face in hiring apprentices with the findings discussed by key political and business leaders at the Summit, hosted by Apprentice star Karren Brady.
Nearly 100 pieces of coverage resulted from this campaign as well as a request from Professor Alison Wolf to receive a copy of the full report after seeing the articles to include in her Government review of 14-19 education.
February: Intel Remastered
Shortlisted for various industry awards, our Technology team created an exciting art campaign- Intel Remastered to showcase the creative application of Intel technology. The project saw 13 modern artists reinterpret iconic masterpieces using digital technology and techniques.
Pushing the boundaries of art and creating one of the most talked about art events on the year, the stories and inspiration behind classics such as Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ and Da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’ were retold and presented to a digital-savvy audience.
We wouldn’t go that far, but we do recognise there is a definite art to the use of Powerpoint to make sure that it’s a useful tool for supporting your delivery to an audience. So, below are a series of top tips from across the agency on how we believe you can get the best out of it.Thanks to Ed, Nick, Matt and Candace for their thoughts.
Powerpoint - making best use of it can be tricky (Image: PresentationMagazine.com)
1. Know when (not) to use it – Powerpoint isn’t Word, and similarly Word isn’t Powerpoint. Sadly, they’re often mistaken as being interchangeable. They aren’t. Powerpoint slides and lots of text are a very unhappy couple and serve to do only two things: bore your audience, and distract them from your speech as they struggle to read all the information on the slide. This is something Lucy Kellaway’s colleague noted in a defence of Powerpoint this week.
Having had somewhat of an Apprentice day yesterday, running around London looking for a cloche, fresh oysters and a sourcing a rather exotic looking durian fruit, I feel it’s only apt to edit this week’s Apprentice Awards.
You should handle one of these with care
With thanks to the ever wonderful Dave Chambers, we present to you…
Miss Modesty award – Melody – “I used to be able to speak six languages, which I taught myself”. Clearly modesty and plain English weren’t two of them, Miss Woman of the Universe? Ho hum.
Shining star award- After last night’s performance, we’ve taken a real shining to Helen. She delivered one incredible sales pitch and clearly understood the target market and unlike Edna, she connected with the buyers from La Radoute (even without leather gloves).
Shining star award2- From the ever ambitious Susie, “I want to put myself forward because product selection is my thing”. Closely followed by, “I know nothing at all about France”, you got to give her credit for almost getting there with her stream of inquisitive questions. On the plus side, Susie can say ‘Bonjour’, but that’s the only French word she knows apparently, which leads to the intriguing question of what happens when she has to say goodbye?
Novel suggestion of the week- Tom – “Guys, can you do some market research independent of your own thoughts?” Leon and Melody’s face after that utterly bizarre and frankly ridiculous request was priceless. Then again, their faces in the boardroom as Al’s pal’s Nick and Karen bollocked them for not doing market research were equally good.
Eye candy award- Slim pickings this year and while Dave was slightly obsessive over Jamie Lester’s style and good looks from the last series, this year we’re stuck with the likes of Vincent Disneur, Alex Cabral (who?) and everyone’s favourite accountant- Ed Hunter. Now with pretty-faced Leon gone, we can tell Lord Sugar means real business.
Quotes of the week
“It’s very classic but quite contemporary at the same time”. Melody manages to destroy 2,000 years of art history with 10 little words.
“Do the French like their children?” I don’t know Susie, perhaps they like other people’s children instead? Is France a strange, adoption-based culture maybe? Do their children like their parents? Who knows, maybe we should phone a Frenchman and ask him.
“I think they’re great products. Just not for us” says one shop owner. In other words, your weird foldy phone stand which looks suspiciously like it was constructed out of spent cotton buds is crap and my grandson could make one for 20p.
Apprentice Final Five predictions
With just weeks left of the Apprentice, we gathered some Apprentice fans around H&K towers to get a lo-down on who they think will make it into the final five. Who’s in your top five?
Thursday was one of our big events of the year. Demystifying Digital—affectionately known as D2—is an ongoing, invitation-only H&K EMEA program that brings social platforms and our interactive communication experts together with brands. The content is geared to to live up to our goal of ‘demystifying’ and to offer H&K clients practical, hype free information.In other words, ‘news we can use’. (I think too often the digital brotherhood falls into the trap of every religion where a layer of mysticism ensures the need for a guru to translate.)
The funny thing about a private event, though, is of course it is also public. We taped, pix and tweeted the day. Tony Wang, the head of Twitter’s new London office, was one of our speakers and in his honor I collected some of the #HKD2 tweets via Storify.
(More presentations and video content to come over the next week.)
HELLO! This Friday marks what, as far as I’m concerned, is the end of the last working week in April. Next weekend we have death, resurrection and ceremonial chocolate sweats; the weekend afterwards we have a nation descending into drunken, vomitous chaos in the name of a patriotic spirit long-forgotten (oh, and there’s a wedding happening too). As a result of people indulging in this sort of behaviour, it’s unlikely any of us will have got over the jaundice before May at the earliest (NB – Web Curios does not condone excessive drinking unless it’s as an expression of royalist fervour, in which case go for your lives webmongs).
As a result of the imminent HOLIDAY, this week’s Curios is going to be relatively light on work-related stuff. Obviously, though, it’s all still GOLD. ENJOY, DAMN YOU.
Last Thursday, three very important things happened at H&K:
1. Our CEO, Richard Millar, outlined his vision for 2011 (I’ll let him write that one up)
2. We had our annual Xcellence Awards and Christmas party (many congrats to all the winners, especially our rising star and resident digital heavyweight, Joey Ng)
3. Ten H&K’ers got stuck in one of the lifts halfway between the basement and the ground floor for 35 minutes
It does get better. It’s true, it does and I know. I remember being bullied at school for not having the Somerset accent that everyone else had and for being ‘different’. I didn’t know for sure then but when I look back I guess I did know I was gay at a fairly young age and clearly this made me a target with the lads at school. It was horrible, I hated it but luckily for me I did think it would get better… and it did. I’m now happily living with my partner in Spain and have the support of family, friends and even here at H&K who encourage a diverse workforce and a implement a robust policy on harassment based on your sexual orientation.
So it has been heart-warming to see so many amazing videos being posted as part of the It Gets Better campaign on social media networks such as Facebook and YouTube from people in authority trying to instil a air of calm and refection during a time of deep soul searching in the USA with regard to how it views its youth as they grow and find out about themselves and where they fit in society. From the moment the news broke of Tyler Clementi terrible suicide in the United States following his horrific ‘outing’ by fellow students the issues facing young people, not only in the US but all over the globe has been highlighted in quite startling clarity.
Raymond Chase (19yrs old), Asher Brown (13yrs old), Billy Lucas (15yrs old) and Seth Walsh (13yrs old) all took their own lives due to not being able to cope with the pressures of growing up in a society that does not appear to protect and support their own. They ALL should still be alive today growing and contributing to society and with the love and protection of their friends and family.
I was lucky I guess, I knew it would get better. It was tough, but it did. My advice to all of those who might see this who are feeling terrible, exposed and frightened is that you should watch these videos. Take strength from them and ask for support. I wish this campaign huge success and would love to see it becoming more global as these issues are not exclusive to the USA. For those of you worried or seeking help and support in the UK I would suggest you call the London Lesbian & Gay Switchboard on 020 7837 7324. Below are a few of the videos I found powerful, moving and worthy of being mentioned. Oh and mine!
Joel Burns – Fort Worth City Councilman reaches out to GLBT teens with a personal story and a message of hope. For more information, or to stand with Joel today, go to http://www.joelburns.com It’s a bit long but well worth watching to the end!
A fantastic video by Google employees in California telling their stories
President Barack Obama shares his message of hope and support for LGBT youth who are struggling with being bullied.
… and me, doing my small bit to let kids out there know that however tough it seems right now. It does get better!
Today it seems she’s at it again, only this time on the subject of whether senior employees should blog as part of their remit. Unlike her Twitter argument I’m inclined to agree with many of her key points, though I still dispute her central thesis that “social networking has become the number one way for senior management to waste time”.
Kellaway makes three very good points as follows (ironically I was discussing this very issue with my colleague Ed Jones over a pint last night but I have a feeling he won’t fully agree with me…)
1.“There are a few people inside companies who are natural bloggers, who are actually good at it, and enjoy it” – very true and see here, here and here for some good examples of this in H&K. People shouldn’t be forced to blog if they either don’t want to, or don’t feel they will be contributing anything by doing so.
2.“You {the writer of today’s letter} are wrong to think it has to take hours and hours. Blogging will only take so long if you are fretting unduly over every comma or trying to present original, complicated material” – again, very true. Make it quick, make it impactful and make it relevant
3.“Most corporate blogs are read by almost no one” – not 100% true, but an important lesson nonetheless. One of the first rules we employ here at H&K when it comes to discussing blogging with clients is to ask them straight up – ‘Why is there a need for you to blog about X, Y or Z?’. If you can answer that question in the positive then you’re ready to start looking at a blog (and again, see here for a good example from one of our clients)
It’s not often I see something on Facebook, Twitter or some other social networking site that I feel compelled to blog about. But I write this as a forty year old and it made me think about what advice I would give. Most is in fact covered off in the 340+ comments on the Coolhunters Facebook page. Just scroll down to the comment: For those who are 30+, What advice would you give to your 20-year-old self? and read some of the comments… now standing at 350 comments and rising! Reading the many responses made me laugh as I had heard them before in when I was in my 20’s and I thought, bah! I have loads of time before I have to worry about all that! The rat race that we call the life we are living can be fraught with many worries and diversions but all of us have a duty to enjoy the time we have here be us 20+, 30+ or 40+… and more! Be that simply looking up (instead of down at your feet) as you walk along to work. Smile and say good morning to someone you don’t know… and always tell the people around that you love that you do, because one day that opportunity might not be there. Or maybe just something as simple as breaking a habit and doing something today that you have thought about but never got around to doing. Read the rest of this entry »
