birddog

Birdjob

With the country unsteadily emerging from the worst recession in 80 years, businesses in every sector cutting personnel and increasing volumes of skilled graduates entering the saturated job market, there have been better times to choose to leave a job and relocate to a different city in order to find something new.

Particularly in the media job market: where a temporary PA role advertised on popular jobsite Reed attracted 305 applications in two weeks; where new graduates passionate about their skills and their industry are desperate and cutthroat to get their foot in the door; while thousands of professionals and freelancers with years – decades – of experience jostle for interviews in an ever-diminishing pool of vacancies.

But the thing about the media industry is that it has a unique draw. It’s reactive, innovative, it overarches and influences social, cultural and political areas, and it attracts a certain type of person. Someone who can’t help but pursue a media career like a moth’s quest for a flame. People like me.

It doesn’t necessarily run on numbers and figures, qualifications and experience. In finance, accountancy, law: you either do the math or you don’t get considered, and your CV needs to read like a top 10 list of desirable accreditations.  Brilliance is defined by certificates and spreadsheets, and opportunity is a rigidly round hole for rigidly round pegs.

In a world where passion and creativity win you opportunities, however, eventually a combination of talent and determination can tempt a slice of luck.

The opportunity to come to Birddog was not exactly ‘round hole’.  One unassuming weekday browsing Twitter, in a long summer of unassuming weekdays browsing Twitter, I happened to spot an RT (that’s a ‘re-tweet’ message as opposed to a Radio Times) advertising a job vacancy. One further message and an email later, my CV was in front of interested eyes.

The message wasn’t for me; I saw it by chance. Someone I’ve never met face to face passed on a message from someone else I’d never met face to face. Through the power of social media, however, this chance connection became opportunity. And quite incredibly, chance manifested itself into employment.

It was for exactly this sort of event that during my two and half months unemployed, it never crossed my mind that I hade made a wrong decision. Leaving a job without another to go to – a challenge. Moving back in with the folks for the first time in six years – just a stop-gap.  The draw of the media industry still attracts a certain type of person, and even in this current climate, it’s great to know that determination, a bit of creativity and a slice of luck can still get you started.

I’m looking forward to making it count.

Tim Miller

Content Editor

The all new Birddog website

So, here it is. The new Birddog website. Nice isn’t it? It’s also the vehicle for delivering the new Birddog visual identity.

In navigating the site, everything is fairly simple.  There’s the usual ‘about us’ and ‘service’ pages, but, like many visitors who visit this site, you’ll probably only ever read them once, so instead, the focus has been placed on two key areas:

Our work is the showcase for all of the work done by Birddog for clients. It’s the place where pictures really do speak a thousand words. The proof in the pudding if you like…

Our world is our commentary on our industry, talking about anything and everything relevant to things in our daily lives. You’ll also find Scot’s monthly blog articles as also featured in B2BMarketing.

These are two ‘streams’ of content, continually being updated by the Birddog team. The most recently added articles will appear at the top of the first page, so it’s simply a case of browsing through the content and clicking on something that takes your fancy. If you’re after something specific, click on one of the words within the ‘tags’ section of the article and you’ll then be shown a list of all articles corresponding with that tag. Or you can use the search engine.

Enjoy…

Oliver Budworth

Digital Director

Crowdsourcing for B2B Marketing

I’ve been talking to people (anyone who’ll listen actually) about ‘crowdsourcing.’ They’ve listened to me, mostly, and then looked at me like I’m a twat. So I started to doubt my own visionary forward thinking brilliance and thought maybe I’d best just shut up and sit down. But then again, I’ve never been one to run from a stupidity contest so I thought I’d persevere. In years to come you can all look back and say, “That McKee bloke – genius.” Or, alternatively, “twat.”

Crowdsourcing is a term first attributed to Jeff Howe in 2006, a tech writer for the US magazine Wired. It broadly means using the power of many to solve problems. Rather than rely on a single person within an organisation or even an entire department, whole companies their clients and people you don’t even know can contribute to solving a particular corporate challenge. It’s all served up on the interweb via your website or chosen flavour of electronica (intranet/extranet/landing page/microsite/social media/forum…) and the corporate entity gathers opinion and content from far and wide. Think of the principal of opensource applications and you’re on the right lines. If thousands of developers around the world can freely contribute a little bit of code in their spare time, it doesn’t take long to produce an entirely open/free platform to challenge the likes of even Microsoft. The same principal can be applied to any challenge where many hands can make light work. It’s a bit of a big deal. One that the B2B marketing community has thus far almost wholly ignored.

I’m surprised at the limited adoption in the B2B space because I do believe I’m in love with the whole concept. Brand strategy formulation is all about gathering opinion and establishing a cohesive, compelling story that the audience will believe in. Brands aren’t about guidelines or products or services, they’re about feelings – how people feel about your brand. Rather than being restricted to the views of a few key stakeholders in a workshop and a couple of focus groups, what if you could open up the brand discussion to the people who really matter – the prospective customers – and have the whole world tell you how they feel? Well, actually, you can. How cool is that? And yet, when I offer the service to companies that I understand are seeking that very customer insight, I’m still being given the ‘twat’ look…

There are many fairly dull examples of crowdsourcing I could offer you, but that wouldn’t really inspire or excite. But by relaxing the definition slightly, I can perhaps demonstrate the power of Social Media to shape how companies can affect or be affected by how people ‘feel’ about their brand.

‘United Breaks Guitars’ started as a music video protest by Dave Carroll, a musician who had his guitar broken by United Airlines baggage handlers. United refused to pay for the broken guitar so Carroll wrote a song, produced a video and posted it to YouTube. Google it and enjoy the video. Then think about the Mashable report that the video was viewed three million times in its first ten days of release and almost doubled again ten days later. In the first 10 day period it generated 14,000 viewer comments. Not many of them were very complimentary about United. You can now download the song on iTunes. Dave Carroll was crowdsourcing – using a wider audience to gather opinion and influence brands (his and United’s).

Best Buy, the large U.S. retailer has been using internal crowdsourcing for over a year. Their ‘Company as Wiki’ YouTube video clearly articulates the benefit of empowering staff to contribute to management thinking and processes to improve the brand. A new idea for a store can be conceived by any staff member, posted to the Best Buy site for comment and discussion by other members of staff. The good ideas rise to the top and management are able to fund the best projects immediately. Best Buy is currently considering how to use crowdsourcing for its external audience.

So. I’m ready. Who wants to play? Genius or twat? Let the crowd decide…

Scot McKee
Managing Director
Birddog Ltd.
+44 (0)20 7323 6666

What You Sell -v- What Customers Buy

Our heartbeat quickens, our pulse races, our palms and brow sweat a little… that’s the change we experience when we’re buying a new car. According to Ian Armstrong, Manager of Customer Communications at Honda UK, the science of car buying is every bit as important as the art. Ian was the guest speaker at a recent Brand on the Run event and I was interested to speak to him about the day to day marketing activities that happen behind the scenes of the more glamorous Honda TV advertising. I think Honda has been delivering great television advertising for years now. They’ve had consecutive successes with ‘Hate Something, Change Something,’ ‘Cog’ (the parts/domino ad) and ‘Impossible Dream’.

Honda TV ads however, are a long way from the ‘Swiss Tony’ stereotypical style of car selling I recall from walking in to a car dealership many years ago to buy a car. Thankfully most car brand dealerships have evolved somewhat. Although now that it’s mentioned, I was slightly taken aback recently when I went into a BMW dealership only to find that I couldn’t actually look at the cars until I had ‘reported to reception’ and been ‘announced’ to my very own personal Swiss Tony. But that’s another story for another day. For Honda at least, there seems to be the recognition that even if the ad works, it can only take prospective customers as far as the doors of the showroom. There’s still plenty of work to do to ensure a vehicle is sold. Honda doesn’t seem to be leaving anything to chance.

The car brand has been undertaking extensive testing of both sales people and prospective customers within dealerships to monitor the physiological changes they go through during the process of buying a car. The research shows that our immediate ‘gut instinct’ is the primary response mechanism that people use when going through the car buying process. The ‘facts’ (car performance statistics for example) are outweighed by how we ‘feel’ about the purchase.

Honda has discovered that customers are most relaxed when dealing with a sales person who delivers exactly the customer experience they say they’re going to – not one that over promises then under delivers, and not even one that under promises then over delivers. The sales people and customers are most relaxed when they’re telling and being told the ‘truth’.

There’s an excitement attached to buying a new car too. The smell of the leather, the clunk of the door, the rev of the engine. The sales person and the customer both feel exhilaration when a car is being bought.

Unfortunately, not at the same time.

Honda’s research shows that the customer is most excited about their potential purchase about 10 minutes before the sales person. That’s when they’ve made the decision that they’re going to buy the car and want to complete the deal and part with the cash. The sales person, however, doesn’t recognise the physiological changes in the customer (because they’re pretty hard things to see…) and continues selling for another 10 minutes longer than the customer wants. The sales person only gets excited when the contract is on the table and the customer is about to sign it. The danger of course is that during the 10 minute period of unnecessary selling, the customer becomes disappointed, annoyed and leaves without buying the car. The impossible dream just becomes the impossible.

In a B2B context, the analogy needs almost no further development. Whatever business market we’re in, the potential to oversell, undersell, or worst of all, not sell at all, is pretty clear. Brand guardians of every B2B market sector would do well to ensure their brand promise is properly aligned to the customer expectation and that the message is delivered to the customer in the way and in the time it is required. Not too much, not too little, just right. We should all make some changes…

Scot McKee
Managing Director
Birddog Ltd.
+44 (0)20 7323 6666