Hasta La Creative!

Here’s a blind item that many readers will find painfully familiar.

Seems that a certain freelance recruiter has a certain interest in a certain creative director at a certain major agency.

The party in question has worked with the recruiter in the past, but he/she was more than a little pissed to get no response to a query about an (alleged) job opening in the creative department of a different agency.

Our PR contacts remind us that their jobs are all about relationships — and, quaint as it may sound, the same is true of recruiters.

We thank the responsible party for taking the time to write such a compelling email…and giving us yet another excuse to scroll through “angry businessman” stock photos.

Hi [name withheld],

Just following up on my follow-up email about the job description you promised to send me yesterday. My guess is that my salary requirement was too high for the position, which is fine, but would it really have been that hard to let me know? Sure, for some reason radio silence is an accepted method of communication in this industry, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a pretty awful way to treat someone. You’d think that a recruiter like you, whose professional livelihood depends on their network/rolodex, would value maintaining connections more.

Remember a few years ago when you were recruiting me for that eBay-offshoot company, or have you forgotten? I haven’t. To refresh your memory: my interview went very well and we were negotiating salary and benefits, emailing back and forth every hour or so, before settling on a number. Then you went completely silent, didn’t respond to my next three emails and I never heard from you again. Sure, it wasn’t a great gig and I found something better pretty soon after, but again, why not take a couple minutes just to let me know what happened?

To clarify – this is not about my feelings. That certainly wasn’t the first or last time I’d received the silent treatment and I have plenty of colleagues and friends with similar tales to tell.

Here’s what gets me, though – I’m in a management position. A portion of my job involves hiring people and working with recruiters such as yourself. I would think that you’d exert at least the bare minimum level of respect and professionalism towards someone who can HELP YOU MAKE MONEY. Also, many of the copywriters and art directors you’re communicating with now will be in similar positions in the future. Do you really expect them to forget or look past that time you totally blew them off a few years back?

Look, I’m sure you’re really busy. Your inbox probably gets bombarded all day and night with email from young, desperate advertising creatives. It must be exhausting keeping up with it all. So here’s what I suggest: create a Word Document with a few standard email responses that you can copy and paste throughout the day. Here’s a sample to help get you started:

“They really liked you, but didn’t think you were the right fit for the position.”

“I haven’t heard anything yet, but I’ll let you know as soon as I do.”

“They want to talk to other candidates before making a decision.”

“They just lost/won some business, so everything’s crazy over there right now.”

“They’re having a hiring freeze.”

Secret: all of the above are lies. I know this because I’m a professional liar (I work in advertising, remember?). But these are helpful lies – they provide closure, allow people to move on and help you sustain a professional relationship with them. All that with just a few keystrokes!

Please understand that the point of this email is not to belittle you, but rather to help you help yourself. Maybe if you make a commitment to start treating people better it’ll inspire others to do the same and then one glorious day in the future we can all look back and have a laugh about back when it was an industry standard practice to ignore people you’d spent a few days or weeks building up a rapport with. Sadly, my guess is you are not up to task and that you won’t respond to this email. Just please don’t be offended next year or the year after that when you reach out about a job or a candidate and never hear back from me. I will never forget to remember.

Take care,

[name withheld]

Bem no meio de Manhattan, mas quase ninguém viu

> LEIA MAIS: Um imigrante invisível no meio de Nova Iorque é capa da New York Times Magazine

Post originalmente publicado no B9
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The more ways in which people can engage with TV content, the more time and attention they pay to it. Networks have kept pace with technological changes, extending programming across digital formats to let viewers watch wherever, however and whenever they want. And, increasingly, they’re choosing to do that on smartphones and tablets. All the stats on time-shifting and streaming point to a significant consumption surge.

Throughout the advertising community, though, people are mistaking the device athleticism and increased streaming for a revolution. Even the lead story in AdAge earlier last week, “Welcome to the Video Revolution,” made this leap. While the piece sets forth overall numbers showing the primacy of TV attention — 149 hours a month across five screens (TV, desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphone) — and mentions that TV “may be growing [its] viewership on desktop computers and mobile devices,” it still calls a six-hour monthly decline in conventional TV viewing evidence of a revolution.

That’s confusing the device for the content. What’s actually happening is an evolution: TV viewers are pursuing their favorite content on the best available device. In doing so, viewers extend TV’s reach across today’s full range of video-viewing devices and conduits. Netflix attests that more than half of subscribers’ viewing time is devoted to premium TV content. Add Amazon Prime, Hulu and other streaming services, and TV has increased both its utility and its exposure.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

(TrendHunter.com) Nasty Gal’s denim swimsuit boasts a retro design inspiration and pays homage to the styles of the 70s. The onepiece suit is made from a thin, jean material and is accented with a drawstring…

Category: Beyond Madison Avenue
Summary: “I’m your mother. I’m your daddy. I’m that cat in the alley. I’m your doctor when you need — thank God they legalized weed. You know me; I’m your friend. I’m your main boy, thick and thin….”

We’re not quite sure what to make of this entry into the Erotic Psychedelia genre courtesy of Steve Stoute’s Translation.

Something is happening today, and it should be very arousing.

The video is restricted at the moment, so you’ll have to click through to watch all 20 pulse-quickening seconds.

All the agency would tell us is that it is NOT for any client and that it’s meant to be viewed by internal teams.

Your guess is as good as ours, then…

Mother’s Day doesn’t hit until May 10, but it’s never too early honor Moms.

Brazilian agency F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi is getting ahead of the marketing rush with a tender short film for household appliance maker Electrolux. With “Fantasy Kitchen,” agency and brand highlight the bonding session between a couple of Brazilian moms — who happen to be real Electrolux consumers — and their kids via tall tales and food. The children’s fables not only inspire their moms’ handiwork in the kitchen, but an illustrator who brings their dreams and characters to life. The end result is a meal and experience worth savoring, if only to see the moms’ and kids’ reactions.

This isn’t the first time Electrolux has mixed cooking with sentimentality; the brand’s holiday-themed “A Special Evening” effort did the same.

Sandra Montes, Electrolux marketing director for Latin America, sums up the client’s marketing approach:

“The brand has adopted storytelling in the digital environment as a powerful tool capable of contributing to brand building, and generating knowledge and experience for the consumer. Electrolux has invested the most in digital channels over the last three years, with investments representing 10% of the company’s annual marketing budget.”

“Fantasy Kitchen” will air online and on various social networks as well as in retail stores.

General Creative Direction: Fabio Fernandes | Eduardo Lima
Creative Direction: Theo Rocha
Editing: João Paulo Testa
Art Direction: Ricardo Pocci
Account Management: Marcello Penna | Gisela Assumpção | Gabriela Marques | Roberta Prevedello | Julianna Carvalho
Planning: José Porto | Guilherme Pasculli | Erika Kitabayashi | Fernanda Malaco
Media: Fábio Freitas | Adriana Roza
RTVC: Victor Alloza | Renato Chabuh | Fernanda Sousa | Maira Massullo | Rafael Paes
Producer: Big Bonsai
Scene Director: Adriana Yañez
Director of Photography: Bruno Tiezzi
Post Production: Big Bonsai
Finishing: Big Bonsai
Executive Producer: Clara Ramos
Assembling: Gugu Figuerôa
Service: Clara Ramos
Sound Producer: LOUD
Maestro:  LOUD Team
Account Management: Ludmila Stempniewski
Projects: Aline Verissimo | Beatriz Agnelli
Content: Rogerio Soares
Client Approval: Sandra Montes | Silvia Tamai | Rita Moraes

Back in 2008, BuzzFeed was a two-person editorial operation with 750,000 monthly visitors, but it already knew exactly where it was headed.

It was, at the time, just a sliver of what the media empire would become (it now boasts more than 200 million uniques and almost a billion video views a month). Still, site founder Jonah Peretti was confident in his business model and wanted to sell investors on his vision.

Looking back through the presentation (resurrected this week via a tweet from former New York Times digital exec Martin Nisenholtz and picked up by Quartz), you won’t find too many surprises—and that’s probably what’s most impressive. The deck shows BuzzFeed largely maintained its trajectory, building a sprawling juggernaut atop its early vision of “advertising as content” and “trend targeting.”

Most fascinating is the Venn diagram above, in which BuzzFeed attempted to visualize its role as the cross-section between digital advertising and popular content. The site vowed to be the best of both worlds, tapping the real-time zeitgeist similar to early competitors like Digg, but doing so in a way that created content worth selling ads against (or into). 

Sure enough, looking at that list of competitors is a keen reminder of just how dominant BuzzFeed has become. Mahalo has drifted off the cultural radar, while Squidoo was absorbed into HubPages. Reddit, of course, has been no slouch, but the real surprise in this chart is the unquestionable success of the hybrid content-marketing model BuzzFeed is laying out, a model that’s almost become a cliche of modern media amid the explosion of native advertising.

Of course, this hybrid model has created headaches for BuzzFeed along the way, most recently with the debate around the removal of articles that criticized ad partners. Check out more of the slides below, or view the full presentation on Scribd.