Not surprisingly, according to research, the ads have scored better than the previous feature-based approach. At TMP, we have long held that enumerating features does not a brand make. People want to see benefits. That's true in B2C, B2B and recruitment, where job seekers will usually want to know the psychological and identity impact of a position or career.

BTW, I had been originally reluctant to post the tweet for several reasons: It's very bad form for professionals to question another agency's work when you don't know the strategic thinking behind message and audience. And I like Zooey Deschanel pretty much in anything, felt she had been snubbed by the Academy for 500 Days of Summer,like the fact that she hales from Northwestern University's Theater Department (where I have my degree and she spent seven months) and appreciate that our mutual friend Nelly Lewis (Lambert), who went to Shakespeare camp with her in the late 1990s, says that she did a great Juliet. Having lectured on advertising to Nelly's rhetoric class at Catholic University, I think it must have been an excellent experience.

So, Siri, please post your new spots.

The active and passive job-seeking pinner is most likely to be female, between the ages of 25 and 54, living in a Midwestern state and has completed some college courses.  So, if you’re a recruiter for a Biotech company in California sourcing for a scientist, this is not your market – yet.  While Pinterest currently attracts a niche market, the site is rapidly growing – crossing the 10 million user threshold in January 2012 with 11.7 million users – faster than other site in U.S. history.  Since that time, Pinterest has increased its daily visitors by 145%.

The Pinterest-savvy job seeker has converted their traditional bulleted and outlined resume into a stunning visual representation of their skills worthy of pinning and re-pinning.  They pitch themselves for employment via infographics and images touting their abilities, education and previous employment.  They may also create boards to publish their portfolios and depict their personal brand.  Job seekers research tactics for finding a job and keep abreast of job-related facts.  Job-seeking pinners also network with job placement companies and career experts while interacting with companies on Pinterest in an attempt to establish rapport and land employment. 

Don’t panic yet.  While there ARE active job seekers on Pinterest, it is important to evaluate not only if the site is an appropriate channel for broadcasting your organization’s brand message, but also if it aligns with your overall social media strategy.

Here are some best practices to consider:

An essential element in engaging with talent on Pinterest is through the usage of images, charts, graphs and infographics to impart information.  Images are a great way to differentiate you as an employer because you can easily show off your personality.  Candidates can ascertain through genuine photos what it’s really like to work for your organization and what sort of corporate culture they can expect as a staff member.  Photos of the company’s Halloween costume contest will convey an organization with a more relaxed atmosphere.  Healthcare organizations may choose to post photos of nurses working with state-of-the-art equipment to illustrate the company’s dedication to advanced training.  These inferences may only be drawn by being transparent and using photos of actual and current staff members (so long as you have employees’ consent and conform to all HIPPA laws!).  Stock photos should NEVER be pinned.  They’ll just look down-right silly and won’t aid in differentiating you as an employer.

Generating enough genuine content for pins may seem overwhelming.  Identify your organization’s brand evangelists, provide them with specific guidelines, training and expectations, and allow these highly engaged employees to get in on the action. They can do this  either by pinning with your company account or allowing them to set up their own accounts and pin to a user-generated pinboard.  This is an opportunity to showcase your unique culture and reinforce your employer brand promise.  

Be careful not to overly indulge in self-promotion.  You’ll risk coming across as “spammy” to the Pinterest community.  And besides, Pinterest can’t be used as a means to solely promote yourself or your services.  Diversify your pins to include external content; create boards with pins of industry-related case studies, blog posts and articles that are  relevant to your pipeline of both active and passive job seekers. 

But it’s not just what you pin, it’s how you pin.  The click through link attached to a pin is just as important as the pinned image itself.  Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Twitter. It also surpasses YouTube, LinkedIn and Google+ combined.  If you’ve enticed a candidate to click through on a pin, they want to learn more information about it.  For example, a pin showcasing a chart depicting the number of employees who took advantage of your tuition-reimbursement program should link to a page describing the tuition-reimbursement program in detail.  There’s nothing more frustrating than clicking on a pin and being taken to a page that is only hosting the image.

A pin’s description is also an important consideration and opportunity for reinforcing your brand message.  Pinterest recently imposed a 500-character limit on captions – so choose your words carefully!  Create valuable SEO driven description for pins utilizing select keywords so that your pin may be easily found via the Pinterest search function.  As with Twitter, include a relevant hashtag and be sure to use the “@PinnerName” to let your fellow pinner know that you’ve mentioned them.  These functions enable Pinterest to be a highly viral community providing an excellent opportunity for brand advocacy.  If people love you, they pin you!

Below are pinboard ideas that can lend support to your employer brand:

• Events Board – Post pictures of conferences, company parties, etc.
• Corporate Responsibility Board – Photos of staff members engaging in community service, charts depicting money raised for charity
• Behind The Scenes Board - videos and photos of “a day on the job”
• Employee Testimony Board – Showcase real employees’ headshots with quotes about their positive work experience, video testimonies
• Books Worth Reading – Prove your expertise and diversify your pins by including industry-related good reads
• We’re Hiring Board – Post visual job openings and descriptions with infographics depicting the ideal candidate
• Our Work Board - Showcase your work for case studies and whitepapers by pinning infographics representing the data
• Company History Board – Photos of important moments in your organization’s history: ribbon cutting ceremony, appointment of a new CEO, etc.
• Awards Board – Pictures of employees accepting awards or the work that earned the award

As with all social media properties, our advice remains the same: don’t get caught up in what’s trendy today. Evaluate what it is – does it align with your overall social media strategy and guidelines? Do you have the assets and resources required to make it effective? Then, if you choose to pin, pin steadily!  It’s imperative to actively connect with other pinners who share similar interests as your organization – follow, re-pin, like, comment and share with the community.  Ensure your Pinterest efforts are cohesive and reinforce your overall brand strategy.  Include the Pinterest icon along with your other social icons on your web properties.  Tweet and share your pins on facebook so your existing fans know where to find you on Pinterest.

We are living and working in an exciting world of rapid productization. With a world clock of compressed time zones, innovative new products are launched to the public as fast as it takes to open a browser. Never before have we been able to be a part of future evolution like we are today. We are the guinea pigs of technology's bipolar characteristics in that we are constantly playing catch up to the next 2.0, 3.0, 4.0+ upgrades. We are all a part of a science project in a test tube known as the target audience.

Concurrently big Data consumption and creation is driving a frenzied market of technology platforms, products and solutions. In result we have more and more messages and platforms to socialize, work, get jobs, and simply just communicate. The total mobile apps for the month of Feb. in the US App store alone was 486,390. So what is the current paradox? People want more with less.

Ironically with all of this technology power we see the need for simplicity. With all this comes techplexity. (yes, a made up buzzword for lack of better term to describe the overwhelming technical choices of gadgetry filled with features and content that we have to digest). In many cases the features and functions might even fight each other for our attention and we become overwhelmed. As we realize this we are all seeking ways to make our lives and businesses more productive and better. So as technologies and solutions are being built around simplicity, you can imagine how it affects career website experiences.

One login. One profile. Instead of long forms to sign up, people log in with their LinkedIn profile. And with mobile apply, the LinkedIn profile becomes the mobile resume. Companies that have an e-commerce or a customer service member login are creating ways for the single sign on to help personalize not only the products and services they sell to people, but career content that the customer may be interested in. 

Conversely, we see a trend of how people carry different profiles tailored to fit different types of agendas they are networking with. There is a lot of great discussion around how you are only ONE BRAND, your Facebook profile is associated more towards your lifestyle of friends and family type content where as your LinkedIn profile associates more professional career and business related content. Even though there is a business side to FB, the dominant use is pure socializing with friends and family. It's all about the context of the content that determines the most relevant profile to log in with.

Shared experiences and workflow are becoming the standard in how people are consuming and creating content. It goes beyond pure social activity and is woven into the fabric of our business practices and connectivity as an efficient way to do more with less. Connection to shared content whether it be friends, interests, hobbies, skills and jobs ignites social activity. It helps drive growth and empowerment. It brings together diverse ideas and people together, and in result contributes to innovative cultures. 

Now developing a culture of innovation is challenging but the rewards are rich in that it gives companies a competitive edge to overcome market challenges and even shape the market with their own vision.

In an innovative culture, innovation in and of itself is a mindset. So the tools are the means but the mind set is a set of habits and behaviors that fosters an innovative culture. Innovation is seen as:

• A Competency
A well-defined set of innovation competencies and habits that are embedded into every employee’s competency model

• A Competitive weapon
Deploying innovation methods within all planning and strategy initiatives to differentiate

• Institutionalized within the business practice
Innovation guidelines and benchmarks that define what innovation looks like

On the horizon

Employee Life-Connect Packages
With simplification comes more integrated personalization features which can deliver relevant timely content. So LBS is just a part of an integrated technology package that is synched up to "life connect packages" which links up content and interactions that drive people's work, appliances, home security, healthcare, travel, entertainment etc. To call out some specifics in these "life connect packages" you have:

- On-the-go networks streams where people and businesses are on 24/7 no matter where they are in real time. Content travels continuously and seamlessly with them as they move from platform to platform, device to device. Even in the middle of a game or a file.

- TV, Cable, and web content are not only accessed anywhere on any device, but they are interactive in that consumers can participate with the brands, including the tv shows.

- The rapid adaptation of cloud computing changes the game of software and application development as well as enterprise wide employee user flows. Self service application development for organizations have gone far beyond CMS platforms and blogging platforms giving way to more agile smaller companies to quickly launch niche based web applications. Need to build an app? Just go to the web and build it. No programming knowledge needed.

- Mobile game development becomes easier for companies to deliver branded content without the large investment of game development with sponsorship programs. (At the moment when the audience wins, companies can serve up sponsored banners, mobile coupons etc. to reward the person at that moment)

- Gamification platforms are opening up more opportunities for companies to connect high value fun branded content to incentive programs that engage people deeper into their brands.

Of course, there is one job that probably comes closest to that description.

Along those lines, P&G has put out another "Thank You, Mom" in preparation for this summer's UK Olympics. Wieden & Kennedy is the agency, and TMP handles the employer brand side, which picks up on this theme of supporting aspiration. The spot is appropriately called "Best Job."

If you have any lingering questions about the employer value proposition of motherhood, may we suggest you take out your Kleenex first.

.

A blend of cooperation and competition and cooperation is nothing new around here in Washington. Defense and other government contractors have been teaming for years. When you're building complex systems, it's been well acknowledged that teams are the way to go. No one company has all the answers. Similarly TMP Government has been part of multi-disciplinary teams for such citizen-centric, cloud-based and advanced websites as Recovery.gov and Treasury.gov. It's common for us to work shoulder to shoulder with other DC agencies on smaller projects, too.

In fact, Harvard's Adam N, Brandenburger and Yale's Barry J. Nalebuff laid out the theoretical basis of this "game theory strategy" back in 1997 in their best-selling  book Co-opetition.

But when General Motors recently ended its review for Chevrolet by creating a 50-50 joint venture with two major consumer ad agencies, that's news. The Commonwealth Venture marks " the first time that two large marketing communications holding companies have come together to form a single company." Detroit-based Commonwealth is a first-of-its-kind 50-50 joint venture, combining San Francisco-based Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, an Omnicom Group company, and New York-based McCann Erickson Worldwide, an Interpublic Group company.

Pictured below (left to right) are the four creative leaders, Washington Olivetto, Jeff Goodby, Prasoon Joshi and Linus Karlsson, who will work in collaboration on all major Chevrolet creative initiatives and resource allocations. In Advertising Age, Goodby has laid out how and why it will work.

What we've found is that co-opetition is a great adventure of discovery, inviting both compromise and learning. It is a process that can change anyone open to it in a profound way. Done rightly this interdependence can ultimately benefit the customer far more than those competitive endeavors that can entail wasteful, non-value-creating reactions. It can also lead to "trade-ons" (versus "trade-offs), where you get higher quality and lower cost at the same time. That's why Brandenburger and Nalebuff call it a "game changer."

So, gentlemen, start your engines!

In celebration of Internet Advertising turning 18 years old this year, Google has put a challenge out to our industry of advertising. And that is to bring some of the most iconic, memorable and classic advertising campaigns to life using the power of the digital medium we have today. Four major brands have participated along with the original group of advertising legends that created those campaigns.

Coke, Volvo, Alka Seltzer and Avis. Currently Coke and Volvo have already been done. What is fascinating about this exercise is that it teaches us how much the world has changed in the way we communicate and engage with brands. But it also teaches us how sometimes we lose sight of the power the digital medium gives us to engage and inspire people to do something, think something, feel something. Not just click on a button for more information. Or arrive at a site and robotically follow a scientific route of usability principles. 

Coca-Cola's re-imagined advertising

The legendary Bill Bernbach who was one of the pioneers of great advertising said, "Sometimes it's not what you say but how you say it." A classic philosophy that underpins some of the greatest advertising ever made. This philosophy was made for the digital medium we have today. Perhaps today we would say, "sometimes it's not what you say, but how your audience participates with it."

He goes on to say, "There are a lot of great technicians in advertising. And unfortunately they talk the best game. They know all the rules. They can tell you that people in an ad will get you greater readership. They can tell you that a sentence should be this sort or that long. They can tell you that body copy should be broken up for easier reading. They can give you fact after fact after fact. They are the scientists of advertising. But there's one little rub. Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art. It's that creative spark that I'm so jealous of for our agency and that I am desperately fearful of losing. I don't want academicians. I don't want scientists. I don't want people who do the right things. I want people who do inspiring things."

Recruitment advertising has come a long way as well. From the typical help wanted ads we pumped out in the 80's that were basically job opportunities crammed into the classifieds to the more emotional employer branding campaigns that speak to the aspirational level of joining the organization. Audience behavior and the job market has a lot to do with how our advertising has changed. Today the audience is in more control. We have heard that thousands and thousands of times. But even though we have more power in how we consume and share content, we are still the social animals we were back during the "Where's the beef?" days of advertising. Persuasive creativity that inspires us to think, do, feel something still drives the level of digital persuasion in all our ideas. 

Tom Friedman quotes Dr. Sridhar in a recent column in the New York Times. With Taiwan as an example, Friedman notes that a workforce gets smarter and more capable because fewer resources demand greater creativity. Since Taiwan has virtually no natural resources, Friedman points out that "this barren rock in a typhoon-laden sea" has created the fourth-largest financial reserves in the world through developing people skills. He backs up his thoughts with a study from the O.E.C.D. that shows that the knowledge and skills of the high school population in different countries rise where the GDP is less dependent on natural resources. Those countries tend to honor and support education, which is increasingly the "global currency" of success.

I found a similar thought in the defense realm, where concern looms that huge budget cuts may stifle necessary innovation. In the March issue of National Defense, Lt. Col. Mark Ward, a USAF acquisitions officer, deployed in Kabul, discusses the correlation between restricted funds and more innovative technology. He lays out advantages of "austere innovation" not only for military organizations, but also for the industry. His conclusion seems especially relevant to most organizations: defense and civil government, defense contractors, technology firms, even consumer companies: "...we find that operating in a fiscally austere environment tends to result in affordable, simple products that are available when needed and effective when used. As an added bonus, the work force gets smarter and more capable. Everybody wins."

While that may be positive (don't many of us like shortened nicknames, e.g. people call me EP or E), positioning thought leader Al Ries in his column in this week's Ad Age pointed out that the new JCPenney's logo may not be as strong as the shorter form that people already use: Penney's.  The other side of the story is that the new CEO Ron Johnson, formerly head of retail for Apple and inventor with Steve Jobs of the Apple store, is re-imaginging this venerable department store (and perhaps department stores in general). He has created a three-tied "Fair and Square" pricing that makes sense of discounting. He's also changing the shopping experience away from endless racks to themed centers like Main Street and Town Square. He even inadvertently ignited a diversity and inclusion issue by appointing Ellen DeGeneres as spokesperson.

Johnson sees the flag-inspired logo as reflecting his vision for the chain as appealing to all Americans regardless of the seeming divisions of class and age (diversity and inclusion again). He also sees it as part of his effort to encourage people to frame (honor? take care of?) the things they love. Sounds like talk? Well, Johnson has proven he can walk the walk. Along with the late Steve Jobs, he pioneered the Apple Store's "try before you buy," creating a shopping experience that now brings $40 million to each store annually. (Count that against the square feet.) To find out more about how Johnson is re-imagining shopping, see his December interview at HBR (uh, that's Harvard Business Review).

P.S. Do you know what TMP stands for? 

 (Gov Exec's Tom Shoop interviews John Sepulveda,

CHCO, VA, and Robert Buggs, CHCO, Education.

Picture is from ClearanceJobs.com, one of our

fellow underwriters for the Press Club event.)

On Tuesday, I heard two top Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCOs) confirm what we have been sharing with our clients as the way ahead in 2012: Even amidst budget issues, agencies and their workforce need to get the story out about their value. In fact, with government employees being slammed as under-worked and over-paid, the present is the best time to show taxpayers the ROI on their taxes and government leaders the ROI they receive from investing in employees. Employees can then genuinely believe their own management finds them worthy of enhancing skills through education and training.

The occasion was a Government Executive leadership briefing at the National Press Club on human capital challenges, co-underwritten by TMP Government. Both John Sepulveda, Assistant Secretary for Administration and CHCO at Veterans Affairs (VA) and Robert Buggs, CHCO at Education, acknowledged that retention and recruitmentneed a boost from branding.  Mr. Sepulveda noted that getting everyone on board for this effort remains challenging as many in government still feel alien to branding. Yet with retirements happening and possibly fewer high quality applicants (see the recent NACE survey), government has to get across the significance of critical work, e.g. reducing homelessness of veterans.

Mr. Buggs mentioned that the two strongest statements of federal branding he knew were President John F. Kennedy's first inaugural address with its call: ""Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country" The second was the U. S. Army's "Be All You Can Be" brand, which ran for 21 years and came from legendary N. W. Ayer copywriter Earl Carter. This latter brand was based on Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which has influenced the TMP approach to employer value propositions. Maslow saw that once people have satisfied basic physical and psychological needs, they sought higher fulfillment in becoming the person they "were meant to be," e.g. a calling.

In our branding process, we parallel this self-actualization need, with the self-expressive aspect of a value proposition, when a person aligns their personal goals with the agency mission. It follows that the best way to get and keep people is for them to feel genuinely that they are achieving their highest potential while working for your aims. The Kennedy line reinforces that this ideal employee is sufficiently self-actualized to be able to "put service before self."

Of course, enunciating a value proposition is only one step in creating brand salience, i.e. ensuring that job seekers will remember you at the time they apply. Current government employees are extremely influential in shaping attitudes, and, as Mr. Sepuveda said, they have been "punching bags" over the last few years. These employees need to see that they are valued and worthy of investment.

Hence, the CHCOs pointed out the need for training and additional retention measures. The hiring process needs to have its value affirmed, too. At the top end, CHCOs need to assume a strategic advisory role with agency heads to help them understand the staffing demands of incipient programs. On the tactical level, hiring managers had best speed up processing applications and reduce the still unfavorable time-to-hire that loses prospects to the private sector. 

We'll add that both need to be able to articulate who you are, how you benefit the American people, and what you offer your workforce.

First off, Super Bowl ads aren't technically advertising. The traditional role of advertising is "to advert," i.e. to intrude upon someone's intention with a message. With a 111 million attentive audience, many6 of whom prize watching the TV spots as much as the game, the ads aren't intruding at all...unless they try to wham you over the head with a strong sales message. Coleman says that it's like going to the game with your client: Have fun, talk about Manning's incredible pass to Manningham or Brady's almost "Hail Mary" or even Madonna's half-time spectacular, but steer clear of business.

According to Coleman, whose company was Ad Age's Number 1 Small Agency of 2011, "You’re not there to pitch your product, you are there to build a relationship. Your TV spot should be doing the same thing. Spots that focus on building deep brand endearment can use that equity and goodwill throughout out the year. It will make all of your subsequent selling moments more effective. People find ways to justify buying brands they like." (Emphasis supplied)

This latter point underscores what we've been hearing in general lately from field like "behavioral economics" and "neuro-marketing." The "reason why" approach to marketing communications, for better or worse, is being subsumed by emotions. The question then is not rational versus vs. emotional, but which emotional fields are brought into play. For example, in a Washington Post Poll, the Clint Eastwood Chrysler spot, which has been controversial to political and media pundits, nonetheless won over the hearts of eighty-eight (88) percent of the respondents.

Agency for the spot was Portland, OREGON Wieden + Kennedy, who also did the Polar Bear sports fan for Coca Cola.