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.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen this done before, but I thought this was the most impactful way to advertise The Last Exorcist film to specific audience. #1: Teens and young adults get a thrill from watching horror movies, #2: Chatroulette is full of them. #3: The lucky viewers who got to see the girl’s face contort and get demonized are left puzzled, curious to see “wtf” that was. The ad simply toyed with you, as if it was within your own environment. I thought it was super clever!

When your client is still confused as to how to use twitter for marketing and pr.

Or needs to know what their social media strategy is.

Oh snarkeynet…

Robert Mondavi’s passion and vision had a profound influence on American culture. And the new site at http://www.robertmondavi.com/ is a celebration of that.

A few years back, industry giant Constellation Brands bought the Robert Mondavi family of wine brands for a whopping $1.2 Billion. It made a big statement about how much equity the Mondavi name had built while Robert Mondavi was helping to build Napa Valley and the American wine and food culture we know today. Along with perhaps 1-2 other famous wine and foodies, you can probably thank Mr. Mondavi for the fact that our Wonder Bread and Kool Aid culture has been infused with a little more food and wine sophistication, including everything from organics to the Food Network.

The new site is the first time his vision of a populist wine and food culture has ever been presented in one consolidated public venue. It takes you through the timeline of how his vision evolved, integrates the on-site events and educational programs that helped make his ideas accessible. It’s peppered with his quotes and ideas, and back-ended with a CMS to keep it all fresh. And above all, it creates a brand platform, using everything from color palette to navigation to content and imagery, where everyday wine and expensive wine can co-exist in an unified vision of gracious living.

Somewhere, Mr. Mondavi is tossing back a nice Cab and smiling.

An interesting article from the NY Times yesterday about mobile technology and how it is being used to communicate with customers.

“At the heart of the matter is how to deliver a great experience to users no matter the technology or platform.”

Read on, oh wise ones

Amit Gupta has an interesting prediction. The cameraphone represented the end of the point-and-shoot camera. Will the iPad be the end of the laptop?

In parks, streets, in malls, on the blacktop in the school yard, it’s rather easy to find kids playing together. It’s not really important what they’re playing, only that they’re doing something together with a vaguely centralized goal. If you watch long enough (long enough to settle into the language and manic behavior) you begin to realize that they often really know how to get things done.

The first thing you might notice is the rather obvious lack of what we might frame as social tact. They’re not carefully selecting words to minimize hurt feelings. They are, instead, hurling for the most poignant effect. They’re not spending twenty minutes providing a back story in a futile attempt to soften the impact of a potentially offensive point they’re about to make. Confident eye contact, often paired with aggressive hand gesturing and neck thrusting, personal space invasion and even a random shoulder check thrown in every so often to signify a conclusive statement is standard practice. Read the rest of this entry »