Steps to get your foot into the advertising door. Or at the very least your big toe.

Posted on January 21, 2011 by Annabelle Clark

Last Monday morning it was decided in the memery office that each week a nominated staff member would write a blog post for memery. The topic was yours to choose and obviously had to relate to the world of advertising. If it was your nominated week and your blog post was not in by Friday 5:00pm you become the “memery minion”. I must admit the thought of writing my first blog that would be viewed by my work peers as well as the possibility of becoming the memery minion seemed quite daunting. What do I write about?

It is the beginning of the year and many undergraduates are trying to find their first job in the real world, which can be very overwhelming.  Maybe I can help someone out there, as I was once in the very same situation. Read my tips!

Three or so years gone, hundreds of dollars spent on text books, and even more hundreds of dollars spent on beer and finally you have that piece of paper confirming the completion of your University degree. What next? University is in no way like school where the lady in the careers office picks out the best options for you. Instead Uni gives you one last ‘motivational’ speech at graduation and sends you on your way. Alone.  That is, unless you go back to spend more heinous hours studying for your Masters – Good luck!

For many people starting out, the toughest challenge seems to be standing out from the crowd and getting that first big break into an ad agency. To help you out I have attempted to devise a plan. So follow these steps to get your foot into the advertising door – or at the very least your big toe!

Step 1. Update your CV online.

Once your CV has been submitted your future employers are likely to stalk you on the internet, making sure you’re the right fit and don’t have a hidden double life. A great example of this is Flight Centre. They ask job seekers to submit LinkedIn, Blog and Twitter details – rather than traditional resumes/CVs when applying for jobs. Make sure all of your social media accounts are up-to-date, they will be checking.

There are also some nifty websites updated daily with jobs across Australia and some overseas.

Lode School of Maverick Thinking

  • Lode is the new way of connecting university students, graduates and alumni with Australia’s leading employers.

QUT CareerHub

  • Unfortunately you can only access QUT CareerHub if you are a QUT student or alumni. If you did study at QUT this site is a must.

Mumbrella

  • Not only is Mumbrella the best way to keep you informed of what is happening in the world of advertising, but they also list new jobs daily.

The Loop

  • The Loop is like Facebook for the professional world allowing you to showcase your work online and get notifications when a job that suits you is posted.

Step 2. Intern

Agencies look at interns as potential employees. If you have the opportunity to intern, then by all means, you should. Sometimes the Boss might make you his minion and you’re mostly fetching glasses of ice cold water, but if you fetch that glass of water as quickly as you can they might just see how determined you are ( I actually did this – lesson learned Matt Granfield). Usually though, Interning will help you get an “in” to the agency but you’ll also be able to work in various areas you wouldn’t otherwise.

Step 3. Mingle

It is really important to look for opportunities to meet with people that are actively working in the advertising industry. Surprisingly Brisvegas has a number of events at good bars where this is possible. Here are a few.

QLD Youngbloods

  • Youngbloods, a personal favourite, hosts networking events, provides info on industry jobs, industry news and tricks of the trade. Get involved!

Babes in Business

  • Babes in Business is a Brisbane-based women’s networking organisation that puts a stiletto spin on traditional networking.

Networx Events

  • Networx Brisbane delivers informative and inspirational networking seminar events to people in business, marketing, communication, PR, creative and digital whilst showcasing various funky, unique venues across Brisbane.

Brisbane Advertising and Design Club (BADC)

  • A club that promotes, recognises and celebrates creativity in Brisbane’s Advertising and Design Industries.

Brisbane Social Media Coffee Mornings (BSMCM)

  • An informal morning catch-up session (every Friday) for people involved in the marketing, advertising, PR, and digital worlds to get together and talk about social media, marketing and all that sort of stuff.

Before you go to a networking function jot down the agencies in your city, their client list and best campaigns, so when you meet the Creative Director of one of these you’re not lost for words and make a good impression.

Go out there confidently and meet with people who could be your next potential employer.

Step 4. Ad Life

Breathe, live and even dream advertising. Immerse yourself in this world. This might sound a little extreme, nay, ridiculous but if you want your dream job you really need to know what campaign was released that day, what company had an epic PR fail and the next step Google has taken in online world domination. You never know what questions could be asked in the interview. Read blogs, follow on twitter, and become a fan of organisations that devote themselves to advertising news.

Bookmark these sites for your daily go-to-guide and read up!

Mumbrella

  • I have already mentioned this site for job listings, but it is also a great reference for everything under Australia’s media and marketing umbrella. Updated every day, throughout the day.

Ad News

  • AdNews is Australia’s leading publication serving the advertising, marketing and media industries. Founded in 1928, it is published fortnightly in print with a daily email newsletter and comprehensive website.

B&T

  • This site is an essential online source of information and a community where advertising and media professionals interact.

And here are some funny blogs to keep you motivated and reignite, or defuse, your passion for advertising.

Things Real People Don’t Say About Advertising

I Am The Client

Clients From Hell

Before the “creative” see it

Step 4 concludes my advice for getting a job in advertising – I hope my tips help someone out there looking for a job.  As Ted Turner once said, “Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise”. Good luck and look forward to hearing some feedback!

PS I submitted my blog before 5:00pm so I am thankfully not next week’s memery minion.

Posted in Advertising, Advertising Job, Advertising Networking, Work Experience | 4 Comments

Citizen Journalism: Rising from the muddy waters of the Queensland Floods

Posted on January 20, 2011 by Anna Goddard

I could sense it when most news outlets set themselves up with social media accounts. I could see it when #BPGlobalPR; a satirical jibe to BP’s own babbling twitter account launched anonymously and quickly gained over 180,000 followers.  But it wasn’t until news broke of K-Rudd’s clumsy fall from Prime Ministership and my (and my flat mates’) first reaction was to jump on twitter to see what was “really” going on that things began to change the way news unraveled (to me) forever.

It was exhilarating to be reading news before it was aired, to get hold of “behind the scenes” gossip tweeted by employees at Parliament House while all of the dry formalities played out in front of the cameras. I was in control of what I wanted to consume and I was HUNGRY.  I could voice my thoughts, pass on information, rock the boat without getting off the couch and God help anyone that wasn’t talking about the election! It was everything I wanted to know in one and let’s PLEASE not forget to mention the hilariously witty tweets that continued to sprinkle my feed with delightful election commentary and served by my ‘followed’ few – let’s just say there were LOL’s-a-plenty.

But the event that has really solidified that this landscape, this social media “tweeting”, Facebook “updating”, blog posting  world had reached into the greater community (that’s oldies, youngies and dummies) was the devastating, gut wrenching and shocking QLD Floods that rocked our world last week.

It began early on when my twitter stream told me Toowoomba had suffered flash flooding at 2:33pm on Monday. I was surprised when the Brisbane Police Service’s Facebook page sprung to action, spewing out a continual flow of flood-related messages and it still hasn’t stopped a week later.  I was touched when a 14-year-old boy started a Facebook group dedicated to locating Missing persons/Animals which received 7,000 likes at last count and I was proud when Twitter was used by #BakedRelief to mobilise and coordinate people all across Brisbane to bake and deliver delicious goodies to well deserving volunteers.  Not to mention the nightly social media news bulletin where journos like @AmeliaAdams9 discussed the day’s most important and relevant YouTube, Twitter, Facebook activity along with official news footage.

Here are some of my favorite Social Media initiatives:

Official

  • Brisbane Police Service
    • 164,765 likes
    • Updating several times each hour on Tues/Wed/Thurs/Fri and still more than hourly on Monday
  • Discount site Cudo emailed and Facebooked members and ran a donation promotion, promising to match any donation to the Queensland Flood Appeal over $5 with $5 of their own, raising a reported 100K by the close of business the same day.
  • Witchery sent out eDMs stating 100% of profits on Friday would go to the flood appeal
  • QLD IT Flood Relief Program
    • The Queensland Flood IT relief team is a group of volunteers who are collecting spare PC’s, printers, servers, from companies all across Australia. We will then service, and rebuild them with an aim to send them to people in Queensland who need the support to get started.
  • QLD Floods – website connecting those in need with those wanting to help

Dozens of flood related groups…

  • “Queensland Floods – You Can Help”,
  • “Our hearts go out to all those affected in QLD floods”
  • “That awkward moment when you see somebody’s status not about the floods” were just a few.

The Fails…

By Anna Goddard

Posted in Facebook, Social Media, Twitter, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Is yesterday’s McGrath Foundation poll a case of great publicity, or a lesson in why we should all mind our own f***ing business?

Posted on November 10, 2010 by admin

by Suzzie Harvey, memery PR Strategist

The McGrath Foundation public poll was clearly the news of the day yesterday; every commercial radio station was conducting call back’s on the topic; it was plastered over every major newspaper and featured on all news reports and current affairs programs.  I presume this predominately grabbed the attention of females all over the country so for all the uninterested males or the people who were hiding under a rock this is a summary of what happened:

Glenn McGrath’s own breast cancer charity, The McGrath Foundation, raised questions in its recent national poll regarding the cricketer’s engagement to Sara Leonardi.  The national poll was set up to gauge public opinion on his new relationship asking whether it is disrespectful if the next Mrs Mcgrath (to be) accompanies the champion to the Ashes and whether the new relationship had made a change to public opinion of the foundation.

The recent Wii Cricket commercial, I suspect, may be what initially sparked public comment about the cricket star ‘moving on’ too quickly with his engagement to Sara and that she is too forward in her public appearances with the cricket star.  Perhaps the Foundation received some negative feedback on this campaign or saw a significant drop in donations recently? Perhaps they have merely taken the bull by the horns and chosen to converse with their stakeholders one on one? From a publicity perspective maybe having Sara in the commercial was a bit confronting for public lovers of Jane & Glenn.  Surely she was not an essential part of the TVC promotion of the cricket game and this campaign was destined to spark public comment about their relationship and her instant landing in the limelight.

However, from a personal perspective I think it was a great opportunity for the couple to show the world that they are together and that the McGrath family have welcomed her as a serious part of their family.  Regardless of my flipped coin perspectives I think the reality is that the Foundation recognised that public comment was not all in support of the couple’s public profile and rather than pushing it under the rug they have faced it head on with a poll proactively requesting public comment.

Let’s be honest here, there are so many breast cancer charities out there so ultimately their focus must be kept on engaging with their stakeholders and consistently creating awareness around breast cancer and their own organisational objectives. Whether we like it or not publicity is essential to every business and with a huge percentage of the Australian public now accessing the world of social networking, it is becoming increasingly difficult for any entity to sweep negative comment under the rug.

So I think what we have seen here is a charity facing an issue head on and as a result generating a huge amount of publicity. So how has it rated in terms of publicity performance?

Maintaining public image (of Glenn McGrath):

What I experienced yesterday on all the call back radio shows was in fact that there is a very large amount of public support for Glenn and Sara. Many callers who have been in the same position as Glenn gave listeners insight into what it means to lose a loved one and the emotional processes that may come with it.  I think the focus on these listeners’ real stories potentially could have transformed a lot of people who were condemning the new relationship into supporters or at least empathisers…

Maintaining public image (of the McGrath Foundation):

It seems that so much of the publicity is actually addressing the new relationship and whether people think that Glenn has moved on too quickly. The issue of the actual poll seems to have taken the back seat.  I think that yes perhaps the issue around the Foundation releasing such a personally intrusive poll may have tarnished the foundations reputation but realistically only the poll results and the donations received post the poll will confirm or reject this.

Maintaining media presence:

SCORE = A+

I cannot begin to try and calculate the press coverage value the McGrath Foundation has received in the last 24 hrs but whether you agree or disagree with the poll, and whether you love or hate publicity you cannot deny that The McGrath Foundation currently has reached top of mind when it comes to charities associated with Breast Cancer awareness.  And I would love to have access to the websites analytics over the past 48 hrs!

If this was my client and I was reporting on publicity reached I would be very pleased to be presenting my campaign analysis report.  The amount of conversation this poll has generated about the McGrath Foundation (positive or negative) has surely increased general awareness about the charity and their core activities.

So I have made a point of discussing what I think is a great example of tackling a potential issue head on rather than sweeping it under the rug and hoping it will pass.  But what are my responses to the poll questions?

-          Is it showing disrespect if the next Mrs McGrath-to-be accompanies the champion fast bowler to the Ashes?

-          Whether the relationship had made them change their opinion of the foundation.

Personally I am disgusted in the whole debacle and somewhat annoyed that it has consumed me for almost 48 hours now. Glenn is a human being and to be honest it is none of my god damn business if he has moved on with his life or not, and had this poll not been raised I would never have even known the name of his fiancé!

It is such a personal topic that I wouldn’t dare to respond to the poll’s questions; however, thanks to the media coverage that this poll has gained, I have visited their website for the first time and am now aware of what the foundations core objectives are:

-          to raise money to place breast care nurses in communities right across Australia

-          to educate young women to become breast aware

Seems to me that this poll and the McGrath foundation will and should be the winner in the long run.

Posted in PR | Tagged | 1 Comment

Aaaand… We’re back!

Posted on November 3, 2010 by admin

Gosh, time flies. It seems like yesterday I was writing a blog called Zakazukha Zoo and feverishly reading every word being written about social media marketing on the web. There was a lot to learn. There was a goldrush on and me, Zac Martin, Julian Cole, Katie Chatfield, David Gillespie, Jye Smith and Daniel Oyston were charging in headfirst. I don’t think any of us have made a fortune just yet, but geez, everyone is still doing well. All six of those six blogs I used to read religiously are still going strong. I think I’m the only one who hasn’t posted in the last week. In fact, it’s been four months since I sat down and wrote anything about marketing at all. That last post was a job ad for a social media intern which ended up getting more than 50 applications. Don’t let anyone tell you blogs aren’t important anymore, or that Twitter is all you need.

So, to all those regular readers, hello, we’re back! A lot has changed in the last 12 months. I now run memery, a PR agency with a strong digital focus and a team of dedicated social media professionals. We’ve got some fantastic clients, from football teams to federal government departments. And Dialogix, our social media monitoring tool has become the number one platform of its type in Australia. It’s been a wonderful 12 months and I don’t think I’ve had much of a chance to stop and breathe, let alone blog every day like I used to. I had a look at Feedburner this morning and was alarmed at how many subscribers this little thing has, so apologies for not writing more.

We launched memery this financial year after DP Dialogue had run its course as a dedicated social media marketing agency. One of the partners was over it, the parent agency was bought out by Clemenger, and like The Population before us, we couldn’t financially sustain an agency which only offered social media marketing as a core solution. I had always felt that social media and PR (and digital in general) were intrinsically linked and the time was right to launch memery as a unique offering.

We’ve run some memorable campaigns lately – take a peek at our homepage and you’ll see some of the brands we’ve been working with – so there’s a bunch of case studies to share. Stay tuned over the next few weeks and we’ll start releasing some results. We’ve kept our learnings pretty quiet up until now, but I think it’s time to start sharing again.

In the meantime, what have I missed? Whose been writing interesting stuff on their blog lately? Who has appeared since I last looked? I feel like I’m a bit out of the loop…

Chat soon,
Matt

Posted in Blogs | Leave a comment

A PR lesson – what to do when it’s a slow news day

Posted on June 24, 2010 by admin

So our client, The Diet Plate (a medical device which shows you how much you should be eating from each food group) has paid a small fortune to bring out the doctor advisor guy from the British version of The Biggest Loser for a PR junket. He’s going to be on virtually every chat show and current affairs program in the country spruiking the virtues of portion control as a weight loss tool, and of course, telling everyone how great The Diet Plate is. They’d been hoping for a slow news week. What they got was quite the opposite. You could blow up the Sydney Harbour Bridge today and no one would notice*. Not quite the way I wanted to launch the first new client of my new agency (memery, more on that later).

Rather than moan about how we were going to get buried, we thought we’d run some ads taking advantage of the situation. It was too late to book anything anywhere, so we thought Google AdWords would do the trick.

Within an hour of the news about Julia Gillard taking the top office breaking we had an ad up targeting anyone who searched Google for her name. Here’s what it looked like (first ad at the top on the right):

While we were on the band-wagon, we also ran ads targeting the other political leaders, the copy was as follows:

Targeting ‘Kevin Rudd‘ searches

The Diet Plate
Lose weight while
eating humble pie

http://www.thedietplate.com.au

—

Targeting ‘Malcolm Turnbull’ searches

The Diet Plate
Revenge isn’t the best
dish served cold

http://www.thedietplate.com.au

—

Targeting ‘Tony Abbott’ searches

The Diet Plate
Microwave safe. In case
of global warming

http://www.thedietplate.com.au

—

Targeting ‘Bob Brown’ searches

The Diet Plate
When you want to eat
more than greens

http://www.thedietplate.com.au

—

I usually prefer writing longer copy, but it goes to show, you can have a lot of fun with two lines if you try. I’m sure Ernest Hemingway would agree.

*Don’t try this at home

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Social Media and PR Intern Wanted in Brisbane

Posted on June 17, 2010 by Matt Granfield

Are you a uni student or recent graduate with some sort of degree vaguely related to public relations or advermetising? Do you update your Facebook status more than once a day? Are you the Mayor of something other than your house on FourSquare? Do you want complimentary backstage passes to rock concerts, long boozy lunches and the envy of your peers? Do you like, stuff? Sweet. Come be our intern. We’ll even pay you from time to time.

We do stuff like:

  • this
  • and this
  • and this
  • and we made this
  • and we have lots of other cool clients, like famous bands, fizzy drinks, football teams, fashion labels, Government departments and banks

We need someone to come and get a foot in the door and help us out with:

  • Coming up with fun things to say on our clients Facebook pages
  • Keeping up with fashion trends and tweeting about them (if you like that sort of thing)
  • Media list compilationing and media liaisoning (not technical terms)
  • Media release writing
  • Writing pitch documents (fun)
  • Media Monitoring (we’ll even pay you a decent amount of money for this bit)
  • Maintaining Databases (yuck, we don’t want to do this but, hence: you)
  • Campaign evaluating
  • Media alert background briefings
  • Event management

If you’ve got a passion for PR and want to come work in an agency that specialises in social media, this is your open door. We’ll be frank, we’re not guaranteeing we’ll hire you when the internship is up, but our last two interns ended up working for us. Hint.

Who are we?

We are DP Dialogue and we work very closely with the PR division of GDP. You’ll be working with both of us.

Where! Where! Where!

Brisbane, and the Gold Coast from time to time

How long is this for?

How long do you want? Maybe 100 hours. Maybe 3 months, depends on what works for you.

What will I learn?

You will leave the internship with a CSMEC (Certified Social Media Expert Certificate*).

You’ll also get your foot in the door at a cool Brisbane agency and get hands-on experience working on actual, real-life social media and PR campaigns with some of Qld’s biggest brands.

*Valid only at a Tweetup near you

How do I apply?

Send something which demonstrates your awesomeness to info (at) dpdialogue.com.au and make the subject line ‘Internship Awesomeness Application Thing’.

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

The magic formula for figuring out how many people should be talking about you online…

Posted on March 18, 2010 by Matt Granfield

We’re doing some social media monitoring for a client who had never done anything in the space before so they had no benchmarks to work from. We didn’t know what a ‘normal’ level of buzz would be and because Twitter data doesn’t go back more than a couple of weeks there was no reliable way to backtrack. I figured the best thing to do was figure out how many active Twitter users there are in Australia and then look at how many of those would be likely to tweet about our client on any given day.

Here’s my working out (bit like a high school maths test really, I sucked at those though). The results are quite important I think, and could be applied to any business:

  • There are about 17,000,000 Internet users in Australia (source: Internet World Stats)
  • Of those, 13% actively updated their Twitter account (ie. ‘Tweeted’) in 2009 (source: Nielsen 2010 Social Media Report)
  • Which is 2.2 million twitter users in Australia (not visitors, USERS, the distinction is very important as not every visitor to Twitter has an account)
  • But of all Twitter users, about 50% don’t really update their account very often (source: HubSpot)
  • So that’s about 1.1 million Australians actively using Twitter
  • There is a widely accepted rule that 1% of any online community will actively contribute to it with gusto and another 9% are likely to contribute from time to time. (source: Jakob Nielsen – he is one of the world’s most respected web usability consultants).
  • As Jakob Nielsen writes: “1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions: it can seem as if they don’t have lives because they often post just minutes after whatever event they’re commenting on occurs.
  • 9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time.”
  • Based on that estimate, there are about 11,000 Australian Twitter users who would be highly likely to update their status to mention any given brand if they had an experience worth mentioning. They’re the same sort of people who would, by nature, actively contribute to other forums as well. As a proportion of the Australian population, that’s  0.04%
  • It’s also likely that there are 99,000 Australian Twitter users who would be somewhat likely to update their status to mention any given brand if they had an experience worth mentioning. As a proportion of the Australian population, that’s  0.43%.

So how can you use those figures to benchmark your business? Easy – work out how many products you sell (or services you deliver) over any given time period and you could expect that 0.04% of that figure will mention you and 0.43% of that figure might mention you in Twitter, or on their favourite social network of choice.

Try it, see if it works, I’d be keen to know!

Posted in Social Media, Social Media Monitoring | Tagged | 1 Comment