There are 14.7 million people in the USA who are currently unemployed (June 09 statistic). That’s enough to keep any jobseeker awake. Well in addition to late nights perfecting the perfect resume, cover letter and (hopefully) outfit for the interview, now you’ll need to start worrying about perfecting your “social street cred” in order to land the job.
It’s old news that employers will Google you, check you out on LinkedIn, see what you’re doing on Facebook and Twitter – we’ve all prepped ourselves for that. However, Best Buy have taken this to the next level and actually set social media criteria that a candidate for Director of Emerging Markets must meet. They require a minimum of 250 followers on Twitter. This is highlighting a new trend of organizations putting emphasis on hiring candidates who not only fit in with their corporate culture, but who also have a great understanding of social business.
To improve your “social street cred”, it’s important not only to have an online presence in the aforementioned social media sites, but to think about your consistency of image across the sites. How frequent and effective are your threads? And how does your content reflect the type of roles you’re applying for? Address these questions before applying and you have a good chance of being ahead of the game.
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Filed under: Social Media , careers, recruitment, Research, Social Media
Da da daaaa:
Toyota Motor Corp. is creating a fully owned subsidiary to coordinate marketing and advertising at home and abroad as it aims to tailor its vehicles to local markets.
The yet-to-be-named company will start operation Jan. 1, Toyota announced today. It will be headed by Toyota President Akio Toyoda and Hiroshi Takada a recent Toyota retiree.
The move makes the Japanese automaker’s marketing and advertising operation a free-standing entity empowered to make quicker decisions, Toyota spokeswoman Ririko Takeuchi said.
“It will handle advertising, sales promotion and global marketing strategy,” Takeuchi said. “It will focus on marketing issues globally and help create a unified message.”
Toyoda took office last month, pledging to improve the fit of the Toyota line to different markets. He also wanted to push decision making closer to the front lines.
Takada, co-president of the new marketing company, retired during the June boardroom overhaul as senior managing director in charge of global planning. His marketing experience dates back to 1995-2001, when he was general manager of domestic marketing and advertising.
As reported by Automotive News
Filed under: Marketing , Advertising, Automotive, Clients, Marketing
Can’t say we disagree with this commentary from ad age:
General Motors’ new advertising and marketing czar is Bob Lutz, who until April of this year headed global product development. According to CEO Fritz Henderson: “Bob’s responsibilities beyond creative design will include brands, marketing, advertising and communications.” (I can visualize Bob at his first meeting with one of GM’s agencies: “I’m not a marketing expert, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.”)
Has respect for marketing fallen so low that the most difficult job in the profession (getting GM out of the ditch) can be given to someone with so little experience in marketing?
I’m afraid so. The fact is that most companies do not assign much value to the marketing function. Nor do they compensate marketing people at the same level as they do financial, legal and other functional occupations.
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Filed under: Marketing , Advertising, Automotive, Cars, Consumers, GM, Marketing
With major advertisers cutting costs, creative shops are increasingly commercializing their own product ideas.
When Coca-Cola acquired Vitaminwater for $4.1 billion in 2007, it wasn’t for the breakthrough electrolyte-drink technology. It paid for breakthrough marketing, and that epiphany rippled through Adland. Why shouldn’t agencies launch their own brands rather than solely focus on other people’s prodcts? Consultancy PSFK recently invited FAST COMPANY writer Danielle Sacks to moderate a panel featuring four creative chiefs running what PSFK calls New Idea Agencies. In this edited transcript of the conversation, they explore what it’s like for ad people to go beyond branding into the messy world of product creation. Will what they learn improve advertising for the rest of us?
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Filed under: Innovation, Marketing , Advertising, Clients, Consumers, Design, ideas, Innovation, Marketing
No, babies are still frighteningly expensive, however according to a recent study by psychologists in Scotland, pretending to be a proud parent of a new-born can save you money and possibly even your identity!
40 wallets with a picture of a baby inside were planted around the streets of Edinburgh and a surprising 88 per cent of these were returned to the “owners”. Doctor Wiseman who led the study said that the photograph of a baby “kicked off a caring feeling in people”. Wallets were also planted with pictures of a puppies, families and elderly couples – apparently the “caring feeling” isn’t as affective when we see these images as the return rate was 53, 48 and 28 per cent respectively.
The wallets used in this study contained no money whatsoever. At the risk of sounding cynical, it would be interesting to run the study again with a few hundred dollars in each wallet!
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Filed under: Market Research , Money, Psychology, Science
Peter Sorgenfrei was quoted in this BusinessWeek column by Ben Kunz:
Viralsourcing: Let Crowds Create Your Ad Message – Not only are fans spreading the word about products—they’re now helping to design and build marketing campaigns from the get-go.
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Filed under: Marketing , Advertising, Consumer, Crowdbands, Entertainment, ideas, Marketing, Music, Network, Online
From Automobile Magazine:
Bill Reinert, Toyota’s in-house energy guru and resident contrarian, looks like he’s just taken a whiff of a long-expired container of milk.
Reinert is serving on a future-of-the-car panel at a high-powered green-think conference sponsored by Fortune magazine and featuring heavyweights such as President Bill Clinton and Bill Ford. Although the symposium is being held in a button-down bastion of Orange County, the ambience is totally Silicon Valley, all iPhones and Aeron chairs, with lots of clever but undercapitalized tech entrepreneurs sniffing around for angel investors. At the moment, Shai Agassi, the charismatic founder of Better Place, is making a dynamic pitch for creating vast networks of battery-charging stations to support electric vehicles that will, he claims, be cheaper than the equivalent gasoline-powered cars. While executives from Ford, BMW, and Fisker Automotive listen with polite smiles, Reinert squirms in his seat, crosses and recrosses his legs, and generally behaves like a schoolkid who can’t wait for the bell to ring so he can escape for recess.
When it’s his turn to speak, Reinert bites his tongue. He mildly questions the viability of Agassi’s wildly improbable plan to create battery-swapping stations for the coming wave of EVs. He lobs a few gentle barbs in the direction of the ethanol lobby, which he privately regards with unalloyed scorn. He outlines his genuinely radical vision of a future where publicly owned and shared cars are used to complete urban mass-transit systems. But by and large, he’s on his best behavior, showing the benevolent public face of the world’s greenest car company. Until the mics are turned off.
“That’s the first law of Disney at work–wishing will make it so,” he mutters shortly after bolting out of the conference room and yanking off his tie. “Using ethanol for fuel is like electing the dumbest kid in school as class president. As for plug-in electrics, they’re just not plausible right now. Lithium-ion batteries are too expensive by at least an order of magnitude. They’re not energy-dense enough. And we generate a lot of our electricity from coal. I don’t think Shai is being disingenuous. I think he really believes what he’s saying. I see it all the time from those Palo Alto types. They think the whole world is like a computer company, and they’re always trying to recreate the dot-com economy. You see exactly the same mind-set with Tesla. It’s all going to work out. It worked out with eBay. It worked out with SAP. But transportation is a different world. I mean, Shai’s bragging about driving an electric RAV4 with a seventy-mile range. How many of your friends are going to buy that car?”
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Filed under: Automotive , Automotive, Cars, Consumer, Energy, Future, Gasoline, Innovation, Technology
Ever roll through some sleepy burg and notice the townsfolk have painted each fire hydrant, recycling bin or park bench as its own work of art? That’s one thing… but how about a whole country? Only in Japan, where the same famously zany locals fascinated with sailor costumes and neon lights on dump trucks have done it yet again. Only this time, their attention has shifted to manhole covers. Yes, manhole covers.