Word’s gotten around about a new partnership FINE’s formed with TAG Consulting that aims at an increasingly important part of the branding and digital communications world – employer branding. And now it’s gone public with the launch of the new placeholder site at  http://www.employbrands.com/ which hints at a greater Employ Brands site to come.

The partnership name – Employ Brands – sounds a bit like the category of employment marketing and a bit like an exhortation to use branding. Fitting, because that rare combination is exactly what the partnership entails. We’re going with the tagline “The Next Generation In Employer Branding”. And we’re reminding people, “you’re brand is a promise, and it all starts with the people who keep that promise.”

Here’s the deal. A lot of people don’t want to work for big companies anymore. But big companies need great people to survive. And so they’re having to figure out lots of ways to rethink their ways, both real and perceived, to compete for the best talent, particularly in the younger “Generation Y” age groups. That, of course, increasingly means recruiting folks in the digital realm. So employer branding is going to remain a hot topic for some time to come.

The Employ Brands partnership positions us to compete for the totality of company’s employer branding and recruiting business, from consulting about brand positioning on through to building employment websites and campaigns. TAG brings a lot of expertise in the specifics of building these programs for folks like Accenture and HSBC, and includes executives from CareerBuilder, Ann Taylor and Google-funded Intern.com, and an Advisory Board stocked with experts and leading leaders. FINE, of course, brings all the magic of creating outreach and designing destination sites and all that stuff we do. It’s a match made in employer branding heaven.

In some ways you’ll find that employer branding is taking on the same qualities as branding to consumers, in terms of requiring compelling creative and marketing. Then you realize that attracting perfect employees is more important than just finding an average customer. And the product you use to attract them is their entire livelihood and lifestyle.

So check out the new placeholder site at http://www.employbrands.com/ and the Twitter feed @employbrands and stay tuned for the full site launch in the coming weeks.

Consuming a product has both tangible and intangible implications. Though the digital realm, rather consistently, suffers from the lack of tactile reward there are rare cases where one can imbibe enough of a notion to feel uniquely sated. We look forward to introducing you to one of those experiences through which we hope to imply an olfactory impression and a more deeply felt craving; bottled and corked by passionate craftspeople in the Pacific Northwest.

Beautiful ink illustrations by Eri Griffin.

http://www.theimageglimpse.com/eri/

Longtime, valued FINE client Symantec’s been hitching their wagon to a number of interesting celebrity pitch people of late, including the likes of Kimbo Slice, ’80’s heavy metal band Dokken, Iron Man, and a few more celebrity sightings to come next week. But none are quite as striking as the sight of Snoop Dogg surrounded by the signature Norton yellow packaging. They are destined to out hip-hop the cybercriminals.

Saw an ad for one of these the other day and I had to get one. Have to say it’s an interesting design. You can drink filtered water and stop buying (and wasting) plastic water bottles.

http://www.waterbobble.com/

This recent NYT article by Guy Deutscher exploring language and how it may (and may not) shape how we think is pretty fascinating…

…but in addition, some of the things Deutscher talks about, such as geographical vs egocentric navigation  (“the house is on the south side of the street” vs “the house will be on your left”) and the impact of language as it relates to perception of color (“As strange as it may sound, our experience of a Chagall painting actually depends to some extent on whether our language has a word for blue…”) easily spark thoughts about designing for the web, a medium which brings you viewers who, for instance, think (or at least speak) of bridges and clocks as masculine, bridges and clocks as feminine, and bridges and clocks as, well, just bridges and clocks. How to say the same thing to everyone?

Revisit your past, here.

First there was chalkboard paint, now there is whiteboard paint! My personal jetpack is probably just around the corner.

IdeaPaint

From Daniel Pink’s new book Drive. Via RSA Comment.