Marketing

Here's what the Learn Team has cooked up for the last day of October:

"Treat yourself. One day only: 30% off multi-week courses when you sign up on October 30.
Use promo code SAVE30 when submitting payment to receive your discount."

This applies to multi-week courses only, but physical and online classes are both included. So for example, if you wanted to sign up for the online "Brand Yourself" at $350 for four weeks (starting Nov. 11), you're really only paying $245. AvantGuild members pay just $227.50.

There are more than 70 other courses to choose from eligible for the discount, so hop to it! You've only got today to register.

FTC DISCLAIMER SLASH PLEASE VOTE WITH YOUR CLICKS AND CHECKBOOK REQUEST: Mediabistro.com is giving away a prize to the blogger that signs up the most students, so if you like what we (really, "I" -- there's just one of us here) do at MediaJobsDaily, vote with your checkbook by signing up for "Brand Yourself" (the only course that will earn MJD points). We will love you forever, and you'll thank us for it because you'll have a totally complete branding portfolio that just might turn you into the next Oprah.

Despite the sluggish economy, marketers said that they're finding it "very difficult" or "somewhat difficult" to fill certain positions, including analytics, sales, creative, technical and marketing, reports Bernhart Associates Executive Search LLC, in its latest employment update.

Wait, that's like, every division of a company.

Our guess is that direct marketing isn't as "sexy" as other forms of promotion, so it may be harder to find qualified candidates. But we also guess this is a field some of you hadn't even considered.

Don't rush out with your resumes just yet, as only 20% of companies surveyed are planning to add staff during the current quarter (though that's up from 16% last spring).

The biggest improvement is expected to come in 2010, as companies are thinking about hiring but still slow to pull the trigger.

On a positive note, reports of anticipated layoffs declined for the third straight quarter, meaning that most companies that had planned to cut staff have already done so and are bottoming out.

Best. job. ever?

Human capital marketing firm Starr Tincup is looking for a marketing intern.

But not just any intern...

The listing:

You will not be getting coffee. You will not be relegated to a hidden cubicle in a dark corner, with nothing to do but check your fantasy football team stats / surf MySpace (depending on your gender).

See any of the actual jobs and take it down by about 25 percent. You'll be doing that ... and occasionally getting coffee—DAMMIT, did we already say you wouldn't be doing that?!?!?! Screw it—you better make a sweet caramel macchiato.

You'll need thick skin and the ability to be told, "That sucks. Do it again!" 15 times a day without breaking down in tears. Seriously, we can't take it when people cry. We understand it's a perfectly normal human response to any number of situations, we've just been emotionally dead for so long it reminds us of what it was once like ... before she entered our lives ....

If you aren't qualified for this position, you aren't qualified for much outside of the drive-thru at Taco Bell. But my cousin used to work there and he said it isn't bad money—if you're 16. Plus, who doesn't like free Gorditas?

Above average intelligence never hurts. How would you know? Think back to grade school—ever been in a gifted and talented program? No? Well ... this is awkward ....

• And it'd be nice if you were an M.B.A. student. It really helps the non-M.B.A. account managers and directors with their ego issues.
• You'll also need an idea of what you want to learn ... or not. Maybe you want to be a jack-of-all-trades and master-of-none. Who are we to judge? Speaking of judging, one final caveat: you need to be photogenic. Take that how you will, we're just putting it out there. Still interested? Send an email compiling your education, work history and personal information (some would call that a résumé, but such proletarian thinking is snuffed out with haste around here) to careers@starrtincup.com. If it doesn't suck completely we'll be in touch.
  

We talked to ST director of marketing Mark Mitchell, half of the team doing the hiring for this internship, about the position. "Obviously its tongue in cheek," he says, "but we've found that it's difficult if we try to list everythnig they could be doing. The internship does change from semester to semester in terms of what they're focusing on," which is part of the reason why, he says, the listing's so vague in terms of actual job duties.

And what about the photogenic part? "A lot of people have commented on that," he says. The addition was a joke, and that's fine with them: "I'm sure that we could [get sued], but that's not usually one of the things we're concerned most about. If we had a legal department, I'm sure they would be pulling their hair out and screaming at us..."

With the announcement of Digg Ads last week, everyone's wondering how to get the most exposures for the least money. As your refresher if you missed the first announcement, Digg ads behave just like Dugg content; users can vote them up or down. The more users like the ads, the more often the ad displays but the less it costs per display.

Clearly the trick here is to create something that will "go viral."

Co-founder Kevin Rose spoke to AdAge about whether this is possible.

"People are already doing this on Digg with all kinds of commercial content. There are tons of examples, like the recent Intel "Rock Stars" TV ad that got more than 1,500 Diggs. I think our audience is OK with the idea of advertising when it's relevant or useful or interesting," he told Michael Learmonth. "I think if advertisers take a look at the type of content that is on the Digg home page and try to appeal to the community, they'll come up with some good stuff."

Of course, he wants advertisers to think that. But if it was that easy to create a viral marketing campaign, why would you need to pay for it, hmmm?

This system is going to be less useful for the totally rockstar ad campaigns—Subservient Chicken et al—and more for the marketers who don't want to be in the top 0.1% of ad campaigns. With Digg's system, originality is rewarded and obnoxiousness is penalized, but you don't have to create a rockstar.

Presentation from Garrick Schmitt - vp of experience planning at Razorfish...

"Actions speak louder than advertising," he says. Companies that do things are beating companies that talk about things.

He quotes: "marketers have never found the internet a great place to build brands through online media." This is true, but that's because "traditional digital marketing is display advertising and search. I want to get away from that sort of conversation."

What is this little green swizzle stick thingamajig? It's called a "splash stick" and it keeps the coffee in the cup while you're walking from Starbucks to work. You get them at Starbucks. Before the splash stick, you had to tape the hole closed or wrap napkins around the cup.

"So Starbucks' green swizzle stick changed the customer experience," Schmitt says. And the thing is, the company got the idea from MyStarbucksIdea - an online Starbucks suggestion box. So "this little stick is digital at the core. It has digital DNA. It's not about banners, it's not about search. It's about a real impact."

Other examples: CNN. The "Magic Map" from the election, and social media integration for the inauguration. "What do people remember? They remember the way CNN integrated Facebook Connect."

Another example: Virgin America. "It's a transformational experience. What really makes it transformational is putting digital at the core. It's about ordering music, movies, TV, and when you order a drink, they bring it to you."

Your question of the day from Schmitt: "What's going to be your green swizzle stick thing?"

BlogHer's just put out a paper on "Best Practices for Marketing To Women In the Blogosphere"—timely stuff, considering the (semi) recent brouhaha about paying bloggers for coverage.

The paper covers the types of she-bloggers out there ("The Storyteller," "The Fan"), what women bloggers really want ("Listen before you speak," "be open to feedback"), and some successful case studies of brand-blog synergy.

If you're still trying to figure out how to tap into "this social media thing," might be worth a read.

This "How People Use Social Media" report has been making the rounds on the blogosphere yesterday and today, and it's finally time to put a stop to the madness.

Consumer research company Knowledge Networks released the social media report yesterday, and in it, says that though 83 percent of Internet users use social media, less than 5 percent of those users "regularly turn to these sites for guidance on purchase decisions" and only 16 percent of social media users are more likely to buy from companies that advertise on social media.

David Tice, vice president and Group Account Director of Knowledge Networks said: "Obviously, a lot of people are using social media, but they are not explicitly turning to it for marketing purposes, or for finding out what products to buy. It's really about connecting with friends, or connecting with other people." He and Knowledge Networks conclude that social media's marketing value "isn't at the bottom of the list, but it is somewhere in the long tail of marketing - about the same as print ads, or online [display] ads."

Okay. What's wrong with this picture?

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Money spent on interactive marketing will grow to $25.6 billion this year, up 11 percent from $23.1 billion in 2008, Forrester Research predicts.

The growth is due to marketers seeking lower-cost forms of marketing—social media, e-mail, and search, for example. Meanwhile, direct mail marketing will fall by 40 percent (yikes!) and marketers surveyed said they planned to pull out of newspapers and magazines too, to the tunes of 35 percent and 28 percent, respectively.

Forrester predicts that by 2014, social media marketing will grow 34 percent. We're not so sure about that one. The bubble will probably burst before that.

But what do you think? Are you tweaking that resume so it says "social media guru" or what?

Need to change jobs? Maybe you're relocating. Maybe you have another reason for voluntarily quitting your job and searching for a new one in this economy. (Like, perhaps, insanity.)

But with a little preparation, you can actually make that leap. MainStreet.com has the story.

"In preparation for the move, Diane [a marketer in San Francisco who wanted to move to New York], volunteered in the San Francisco office of American Marketing Association and used their listing of members in New York to make some information calls...In the end, Diane found a job through online social networking. It was a connection to a friend of a friend on LinkedIn that lead her to a position at Nabisco, one that focuses on Asian consumers both here and abroad. Diane spoke decent Mandarin (she was a Peace Corps volunteer in China for two years). She did a key word search on LinkedIn using "Mandarin" and "marketing" and uncovered the individual who would eventually hire her as assistant product manager in the Nabisco division marketing energy beverages in China."

The volunteering for a committee or association is a brilliant tip, and here's a few more:
-Step up your networking. This is not the time to be casual. Find somebody you know who knows somebody you want to know, and ask for that introduction.
-Study industry data. This may mean giving up on that print newspaper reporting position for now and focusing on online, or it may mean finding a PR firm that works with the government (stable) instead of auto dealers.
-Be patient.

Yeah, yeah, of course Condé would say that magazine ads are more effective, but this new study was conducted not just by them but in cooperation with CBS Vision and McPheters & Co., a planning/research firm for media. The survey found that magazines deliver the most ad impressions per half-hour, but TV ad recall is twice that of magazine ads. Meanwhile, magazine ad recall was triple that of Internet ads, which are (unsurprisingly) mostly ignored. The methodology, and more, after the jump.

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