“Secrets of the Job Hunt” blog lists some creative ways that job seekers get their message to potential employers.

Other (not recommended) ideas from the survey included:

* One applicant sent six postcards, each a puzzle piece, which formed his resume.
* A candidate sent an egg carton with faux eggs and a message saying she delivered fresh ideas daily.
* A job hunter used an office building across the street to post his qualifications on a large sign.
* Another sent a baseball mitt and said he wanted to be part of the team.
* A woman printed her name on golf balls and sent them to executives that were hiring.

Creative? Maybe. Sound a little desperate? Absolutely.

The consensus of the advertising and marketing executives (you would think they’d be a pretty creative group) was that gimmicks like these are not very impressive.

Advertising and marketing executives… gimmicks… not impressive…

I love irony.

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Ok, I admit it, I got sucked into finding my “Diet Coke Personality” (and yes, I consume quantities of Diet Coke every day).

The “personality profile” was a 10 question survey with 4-5 “personality” questions and 5-6 survey questions.

The survey worked because it was framed around the idea of Coke doing something for the consumer (personality quiz) rather than the consumer doing something for Coke (survey).

The enticement of getting iCoke reward points is pretty standard - most surveys will give something away for free and an incentive for doing the survey - but you also got an avatar (picture) showing your “personality” that you could use on Facebook, etc. It’s a cute picture (holding a DC can of course), and avatars are pretty popular for social media sites. Again, very you-centered for a survey.

Your “personality type” at the end of the survey has all the accuracy of a horoscope, but is still quite fun (and reflective of me based on four questions). Even though I know I took a survey, I feel like I got something for me.

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Hasbro and Mattel, the owners of the Scrabble game, are trying to shut down Scrabulous, one of the most popular games on Facebook and a direct rip-off of Scrabble. Much has been said about whether this is a good move of not by a company trying to protect its trademark and whether this will be a public relations disaster in the name of patent protection.

3 things to note

• Scrabble is one of the most popular board games of the last few generations with no sanctioned online version
• Scrabulous is bringing in new fans to Scrabble
• These fans are buying the physical game

Naturally, a Facebook Group has been created to try to save Scrabulous (called Save Scrabulous - go figure). As of 3:20 this afternoon, the group has 8850 members. The group is growing too fast and too big for Hasbro/Mattel to ignore. We saw last month how the Facebook group Fair Copyright for Canada contributed to delaying a piece of legislation in the Canadian legislature; can the groundswell of Facebook users influence a multinational corporation?

Hasbro outlines its position:

SCRABBLE has been entertaining millions of people around the world for 60 years so we are not surprised that fans have thoroughly enjoyed playing Scrabulous on Facebook.com. What consumers may not realize, however, is that Scrabulous is an illegally copied online version of the world’s most popular word game, the copyrights and trademarks for which are owned by Hasbro in the U.S. and Canada and Mattel in the rest of the world. We encourage fans to continue to lay down online tiles at sites that have legally licensed the interactive rights to host SCRABBLE fun. (bold is mine)

Remember - there is no online arena for Scrabble. Plus, Hasbo misses the point by a mile: players don’t care about licensing. They care about the game. Matthew Ingram says: “…how people interact with your brand is pretty much up to them, not you. If you’re smart, you will be glad they are interacting with it at all, and you will find a way to capitalize on it.”

Will Hasbro clue in and join the new millennium by embracing Scrabulous or will they demonstrate a RIAA-like inability to adapt to new market conditions? Can the mobilization of the Facebook army Save Scrabulous?

(3:45 and the group has 9200 members: 350 members in 25 minutes? Pay attention, Hasbro)

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Things that go on behind the scenes of advertising, marketing, filmmaking and other industries where illusion is crucial.

When the illusion fails, it ends up in Consumer Reports “Selling It” feature  :)

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Greenpeace is running a vote for the name of their adopted whale, and thanks to some Reddit (they even changed their logo) and Boing Boing postings about a “super clicker“, the name “Mister Splashy Pants” is out in front with 69% of the vote. The next most popular name has 3%.

Looking at the list of names and their meanings, it’s not much of a surprise that “Mister Splashy Pants” is the clear cut favourite.  There is no distinction between the other names.

Virtually ever other name has a very earnest sound and meaning. It may be my bias towards the English language, but I don’t make a huge distinction between “Aiko” (Japanese for “little love”), “Malaya” (”free” in Tagalog (Philippines)) and “Shanti” (”peace” in Hindi). While there may be a certain lilt to the word, nothing jumps off the page until, halfway down, “Mister Splashy Pants” shows up. This name jumps out of a sea of otherwise pretty but neutral names and smacks you between the eyes.

Now, I know that a lot of earnest, sandal-and-hemp wearing people will be offended by this (”it’s a name a grade 3 class would give a hamster”), but nothing will bring attention to Greenpeace like a whale named “Mister Splashy Pants”. On December 1 (the day after the contest ends), the newspapers will be full of “Mister Splashy Pants”. Not so much if the whale was named “Talei”. Why? It appeals to us on so many levels. It’s goofy, it’s unusual, it’s fun to say and write (Mister Splashy Pants, Mister Splashy Pants), and it is incongruous.

What are you doing to stand out and bring attention to your product/service/cause?

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When I talk to my social media clients about generating social media traffic, the question inevitably comes up: How can we get on the front page of Digg? And I answer: Are you sure you want to be on the front page of Digg?

Digg’s advantage is the ability to deliver raw traffic to one particular post or article. If the article is written in a Digg-friendly format known as ‘linkbait’ (lists, breaking news, etc.) and you can mobilize your friends and fans to Digg the post, you can drive a significant amount of traffic to the article.

However, this traffic generally does not convert well. They are one-time visitors which generally do not convert well: they don’t click on ads, they don’t visit other pages on the site and they rarely turn into regular visitors or community members. There’s always the argument that with a volume of traffic you will inevitably get some people who convert, but how much effort are you putting into getting a 0.1% conversion rate? That’s 100 conversions per 100000 visitors. And you have to repeat that tomorrow. And the day after that.

The quality of visitors is also questionable. The etiquette within a community usually prevents the more immature commenting and name calling; the lack of a community can garner lots of stupid, non-constructive commenting. Simply opening up commenting to the world doesn’t ensure valuable participation; the majority of comments on YouTube videos are mostly ego-builders for the commenter (although it’s nice to have a pat on the back for a cute video, would you invite a commenter to dinner?).

It boils down to this: Do you want lots of raw traffic for one day, or a steady group of committed fans who visit regularly and contribute to the conversation? This will affect what you write, how you write it, and the other techniques you will use to meet your social media marketing goals.

I am currently working with a client where raw traffic seems important. This business relies on volume, and getting as many people as possible to convert - conversion measured in this case as simply moving over to the main site. However, getting people from the blog to the main site is a huge challenge, and there are big questions around the effort of blogging relative to the conversions.

On the other side, the community is strong. The Facebook group and Page is a success; there is a lot of action and involvement. These are people who are committed to the company and the community, and these people are the company moneymakers - people who directly contribute to the bottom line.

The raw traffic option looks great in the web stats, but you need to ask yourself: does the traffic convert relative to the effort? Should you be chasing traffic or should you focus on building community? Think about how you use Digg yourself. Are you looking for breaking news or something to run the clock out on Friday afternoon? Digg is great. Are you looking for content - things that closely relate to your personal and professional interests? StumbleUpon is a far better tool. And of the two, which kind of site will you become more involved with?

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Even more annoying than an intro movie. Ask me for my postal code right off the bat? No way to skip around this? Sorry, rona.ca, bad idea.

For people visiting the site for the first time, you haven’t built any trust. Why should I give up a piece of myself before you show me what you have?

For returning visitors, if I just need to check on something - product, store hours, whatever, why would you throw up a roadblock like this? I’ve already committed to your company - why would you drain my goodwill reservoir like this? The rest of the site better be damn good.

This is serving you, not me. A web site, especially for a major retailer, needs to serve the customer, not themselves. There are plenty of ways to capture this information later. Entering the site is not the time to do it. Imagine if you were prevented from entering the store before you gave up this information. What would that do to your retail sales?

If you really need to look at geographical distribution, look at your server logs, or run Google Analytics. How many people are living in “A1A 1A1″?

Web Retailing 1.0 at its worst.

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So far, I’ve seen two instances of friends becoming fans of companies with a Facebook Page, and both times I’ve checked out the page because I know the friend is into really interesting things. And I discovered a really neat blog - PSFK - Ideas, Trends and Inspiration.

I know I’ve questioned the value of Facebook’s new ad program, but I’m seeing a couple of things: first, the note in my news feed is not overwhelming - it looks like any other piece of news from a friend, and this is well done. Facebook has notorious ad-blindness, but the news feeds get read. Second, the companies I’ve seen so far are small companies, not the big multinationals. And who doesn’t like to support the underdog?

We’ll see how this works out; I’m spending the next couple of weeks developing pages for three or four companies, and I’ll be talking about the process and seeing how it comes together.

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Found an interesting quote in an article in The Times Online (UK):

Social networkers go to MySpace and Facebook to chat with friends, not to champion brands. But, they do chat about the things they are most passionate about, and often that means brands, cool brands.

There is a very subtle but extremely important difference: we talk about brands in the course of a conversation but we don’t have a conversation about brands.

Products and brands come up in the flow of conversation - this is normal. But when was the last time you sat with a buddy to talk about the latest iPod? People are passionate about products - technology, music, cars, makeup, etc., and people talk about these things with their friends. However, if a “friend” (Facebook superficial acquaintance?) of mine kept pushing his product  - that was the conversation - he would not be a friend much longer.

Marketers need to figure this out, and Facebook’s new system isn’t helping.

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Over the last 16 hours or so, there has been much hue and cry over Facebook’s new ad platform. Many commentators cry “I won’t shill for Coke” or “Don’t tell me what me Facebook so-called-friends are reading”. Fine. I won’t tell you about this excellent band I just found. Do you care if I don’t tell you?

Like it or not, our real friends are our second biggest influencers, and I would not have heard about many excellent books if it wasn’t for my close friends. I appreciate these recommendations, and try to return the favour, which I also know is appreciated. If a friend fills out a widget on Blockbuster.com recommending a movie, I will pay attention.

What Facebook misses is the idea of what a friend is. Facebook gives equal weight to our close family, our closest friends (our “inner circle of advisors”), our work acquaintances and the guy with whom we were college roommates for three months. Even among our wider net of associates, certain people have different weights of authority in different areas. If I had Rob Hyndman among my friends (I don’t know him, but I like his commentary on the tech world), I would take his recommendations on books, but probably not air conditioners. And, with apologies, I really don’t care what you drink.

Facebook, I need to categorize my friends. Inner circle, friends, superficial acquaintances (you don’t need to use this terminology). If you would also give me tools so that I can specify the types of recommendations I get from my friends, I would greatly appreciate that. For example, I will take book and music recommendations from Tad, but not from my cousin. If Steve (the snappy dresser) reviews a shirt, I’m listening. Mike: tell me about the skis you are buying this year, but I don’t care for your taste in beverages.

If Facebook wants to make this “a strong trusted referral for your brand”, then I want recommendations from people I trust in certain areas, not my “Facebook friends”.

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