Firstly – Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday & Festive Greetings to anyone reading this. What an up and downy kind of year 2008 was – sporting success like the UK hasn’t seen in, well, as far back as I can remember and then crunches and bubbles bursting all over the place (and didn’t the morbid mass media love telling us about it – again & again & again!). I hope you enjoyed the former and haven’t been dramatically touched by the latter.

As a new business (7months old) we’re just happy to be making a go of it, but I think we’re realistic enough to see that fortune has smiled on this particular fledgling business and I think we’re in a good position to exploit opportunities as they present themselves in 2009 (alone and in partnership).

Anyway – a lot of people have said nice things to and about us since we decided to find our own path and so as we don’t have everyone’s addresses to send cards to we thought we’d use this opportunity to give a general Merry Christmas wish and slip into the festive mood and give to those less fortunate than ourselves – but who and how much to give? Well we thought we’d leave that to you.

All you have to do is nominate a charity through leaving their name as a comment below, and then on or around the 30th December we’ll give £1 for every comment left to the most popular charity. Now we’ve done OK so far, but we’re not made of money (or daft) so there’s a limit of £400 available to the popular charity vote. I’d be gob smacked if it got that high, but you never know – and I think if it does reach the £400 mark then we’ll probably split the pot and give ¼ to the second most listed charity.

So it’s one nominating comment per person please – but if you’ve got friends then make sure you tell them and who knows, this viral festive giving might just see us starting the year with lighter pockets but a warm feeling inside.

Have a lovely Christmas / Hanukka / Yule / Kwanzaa and we wish you and yours a prosperous 2009 –

3D MarComms x

This post is now closed – to read the results & who we gave what to then you can read it here. Thanks.

Fact: there’s not enough smiling in the world – so when I got the link to this video I was made up. Had to chance to meet them a few weeks back and not only are they clever they seemed like very nice guys too.

Does irreverent humour work in recruitment? I certainly hope so – in all the media fuelled misery of the moment anything that works so hard to raise a smile is a good thing in my books. I hope that 2009 is a great year for anyone who doesn’t take themselves too seriously – and www.HereComestheBoss.com certainly falls in that category

Christmas wishes to 3D MarComms from Hanson @ Here Comes The Boss

And in case you are reading this and work in the recruitment industry or know who Jamie Leonard / MyLongLunch are (and let’s face it – if you’re one you’re probably the other) – then there’s some more puppet amusement here if you’ve not seen it already:

Hanson meets Jamie - the Puppet is the one with the hat on

well – OK – I write this from the far East of England which isn’t particularly known for its winter wonderland vistas (much like the New Forest), but still we thought we’d refresh the site with a nice seasonal re-skin. Our intention is to do this seasonally (maybe when we’re as big as Google we’ll too be in a position to do it more regularly like they do with their logo), but for now I hope you enjoy our website’s Winter skin. It’s pretty festive too I think you’ll agree – so here’s hoping we don’t become too bored of it in the new year before we work out what the Spring one’s gonna be :-]

www.3DMarComms.com

In case anyone who happens across this blog is un-aware of who Monster are, they’re one of (actually – almost certainly ‘the’) biggest global brand in online recruitment / job boards. Anyway, today I attended the launch breakfast of the new look (and functioning) site they’re launching in Jan ’09 (if you followed my Twitter stream this morning that’s what that was about).

Anyway – this represents a massive investment for Monster as they look to differentiate themselves in a slowing market, both in terms of design (interface) and technology (what powers the site). I’ll put a full blog post up later in the week with my thoughts, but as a top line summary my thought were -

For me the focus on the user experience (both candidate & client) is clear to see in the new interface and will be the key differentiator in the short term. Then if the technology does what it’s supposed to, with opportunities better matched to the visitors profile, Monster may indeed see a return on their significant investment – this could indeed be game changing. I look forward to watching it roll out, I just hope that the Sales force aren’t put under too much pressure going into 2009 and feel the need/ fall into mis-selling what this is actually about.

What I especially love in this game is when something happens that brings home the real potential and actual value of a particular technology/platform. Today’s example: the internet and the potential to engage, influence and convert opinion – AKA e-brand management (and I honestly think this formula might hold water too – clearly I did pay some attention in that Economics degree!).

I started the day picking up an RSS feed from the Bairdyblog – highly amusing find by Andrew of one of the worst types of corporate “engaging wiv da yoof” / trying too hard that I’ve seen in a long time (video below too). It was too good to let go without sharing so I posted a Tweet (a posting on the Twitter microblogging network) that commented:

“in case you missed it – this from the Bairdyblog – http://is.gd/ak75 Toe curlingly bad from CapGemini US! Or is it Sacha Baron Cohen?”

So the comment’s out there. I know a couple of people picked it up and probably passed it on enjoying it too – but then a couple of hours later I get a Tweet back from @capgemini saying “I have to agree. We’ve discussed this internally and it makes many people cringe! – Richard”

So let me explain what excited me so much about this.

They can’t retract the original video – it’s done & it’s out there. Hey, we all make mistakes, and clearly this Sacha Baron Cohen lookalike may be thinking his was to press the record button. But now it’s out there people will chatter about it – it’s human nature. But rather than doing so just down the pub, in the student union or wherever else people may gather, it’s now going on louder than ever online too.

But it doesn’t take a lot now for brands to hear what people are saying and by taking part then to at least to some extent put themselves in a position to positively influence the conversation. And are they going to stop me laughing at this guy? No. Am I now going to apply for a job with them? No. Am I now going to buy a product or service off them? No. But if I’m ever in such a position where I might be in a target audience for either of the latter then my first recollection will not be of Jonathon “getting wid da kidz” (although it will take a while for that to fade completely), but how CapGemini then engaged with me and in that one act of listening and communicating showed their empathy and human face – and the fact is that as humans we all prefer to do business with humans.

There’s a lot of talk about “listening to” or “joining the conversation”, this is certainly not the first (nor the last) post on this subject – but here is an example that I felt made it all very real. Well done Richard – and you never know, thanks to him/his teams work then Jonathon’s recording faux pas may actually be turned into a positive, or at the very least something less negative (although I think it’ll test Jonathon’s personal skills of Internal Comms management if he manages to turn this into a CapGemini career enhancing positive – I’m sure already he’s writing a white paper on how he planned this whole thing right down to the follow on digital engagement and PR benefit of his “out there” personal style humanising the CapGemini brand).