@dvocable

Twenty-two years back the Indian advertising was just maturing . We had some of the brightest brains from many management institutes, including the much reputed IIM’s attracting this industry, but that story has come to an end. No major reputed management schools invite advertising agencies for campus recruitment now. The reasons are many – starting from attractive package and the job challenge the industry is offering. Also, too much of hype with high publicity could be another reason.

The industry had very few business magazines and dailies which devoted in promoting the agencies. Even the quality of paper in terms of reproduction and coverage was very limited but as time passed by, today, we have every newspaper offering a weekly supplement on marketing. But more often we only see the Ad Gurus being featured week after week with occasional appearance of some noted marketing pundits. I sometimes ask myself if it is really required to do so much of chest thumping to self promote, instead of showcasing great work and interesting case studies. Also two decades back, we had very few advertising professionals who were more concerned with their client’s work and their interaction with the media was limited. Today that has quadrupled and what we hear are quotes and sound bytes -  some relevant and some off the tangent. I am hoping this will slowly change as clients are today seeking more value for their brands through action and not words.

Give me a hardworking campaign any day:

Great advertising campaign examples and successful marketing case studies must be exposed in such papers without any doubt. This could be both Indian and international examples. These will really help the consumer, students from management schools, and prospects who are seeking to partner or join good creative agencies.

I still remember that many clients in today’s world candidly tell the agencies who pitch for their business – show me the piece of work done by the group which will work on our brand. They are not bothered about the work done by some of the (Patli Gully work) other branches for some accolades achieved in the form of awards.

A few years back, I had gone for a meeting to a client who had put us on notice. During the discussion, one of my senior colleague mentioned that we recently won some awards and some good visibility. The reply to this from the client was – you guys are great in building your agency but that does not excite us. Tell me what have you done for my brand so far and tell me what you can do in the near future.

Clients have become very smart and canny; let’s stop fooling them by doing PR for the agency and oneself. End of the day we must realize that our dal roti comes from campaign that delivers results and help building their brand.

PR is a must, over dosage will kill credibility:

There is absolutely no harm in doing genuine PR. But most of the times this does not happen. We have the maximum awards this industry offers and therefore to fill up the spaces of some of the marketing dailies just wait for either covering this awards function or getting quotes from the advertising experts. So much of awards on an ongoing basis have prompted some of the ad agencies not to participate or even if they participate look at only the selective ones. The over dosage of awards and repeatedly seeing the same mug shots and clichéd quotes has to a large extent diluted the interest levels and the credibility of the news that get published. On a global basis on advertising, we have just one or two magazines which have a tremendous equity and it covers this industry in depth with lot of substance and meat. It’s time we also move on the same direction to give our audience some quality and credible coverage, which can impart new knowledge and learning.

Lastly let me also salute this industry as this industry has built several brands over the past several years and has also built in several processes and business ethics. Also on the international front, we have made our stamp by creating world class campaigns.

If the stalwarts of this industry focus on the bigger picture instead of self promotion, it will definitely provide a boost to this industry and we will see more talent being attracted to the industry.

I was fortunate to attend the awards ceremony of the Pink slip awards last year where creative awards were given to agency and companies for creative excellence in recruitment advertising. This is a new and interesting initiative from the Times Group to encourage both the clients and the advertising agency to produce great work in the field of recruitment space which helps in companies to draw good talent especially in today’s employment market where there are ample opportunities but limited talent available.

The excellence awards are given across various industries such as finance, banking, pharma, BPO, technology and software etc. What is disturbing a bit here is that the big agencies are not involved in creating communication on recruitment ads and you mostly find mid-sized agency do this of which some of them has become specialist in creating only recruitment-advertising campaign. The larger agency does not recognize this has a major revenue earner and exciting opportunity for their creative team to do inspiring work. Hence invariably designing the recruitment advertisement takes a back seat. I only look forward with the introduction of Pink slip awards we get to spot larger agencies also create purposeful communication with strong idea for their clients and brands in the area of recruitment ads. Lets also remember recruitment advertisements is one of the most powerful way of building the corporate image of the brand internally, externally and to the company stakeholders.

Corporates ought to focus on creativity and original ideas:

In the 80s and in even in the 90’s corporates used print media with powerful communication to sell their companies to attract good talent. Since the only means of communication available was the daily press and business magazines limited space was allocated by media companies to release ads. Most publications earmarked some space and special dates in a week to release these recruitment ads and as a result the recruitment space was cluttered. Most of the appointment advertisements appeared in the supplements of the main issue in black and white for senior positions and you had the classified ads, which permitted companies to release ads for junior posts and walk in interviews.

The country is today in its growth path and industries have started flourishing across category and the need for quality talent is required on a continuous baisis. Earlier we had very few industries that used to advertise for manpower. That has taken a quantum leap and today the industry has grown leaps and bound beginning from BPO, Healthcare, Finance, Banking, Advertising, Media and Entertainment, Insurance, Software &Technology and the growing FMCG and Retail segment. All these up-and-coming industry are giving sleepless nights to the HR team and Search consultants, as there is a huge gap between demand and supply. The HR team is pulling all stocks and strategy to get the right candidate through various communication tools and headhunters. In doing so companies have forgotten the pivotal role and significance on the role of PR and recruitment advertisements, which has a strong pulling power for job seekers to respond. Companies now have realised this and are actively engaged in infusing newness with original idea and creativity on recruitment advertisements to beat the clutter and draw quality talents to their organisation. Also more companies are waiting for opportunity to get their companies covered on HR stories to supplement their image and credibility

What drives to create great recruitment ads?

If you pick up any newspaper containing recruitment ads you will notice high clutter and the paper is filled with a whole of lot advertisements without any differentiation. This has been the perpetual problem even decades back when we did not have job portals. Since most advertisements were in black &white it was all the more challenging for brands to shout and stand out. With the advent of colour the scope to increase one’s bandwidth in terms of creative opened up. To create great communication in the recruitment space the first and foremost objective is to speak truth to your prospects. You should not promise them the moon and disappoint them. Give a complete run down of the company right from its values, culture and the vision of the company. In your communication you must enlighten about the entire structure and the person to whom the prospect would be reporting in the work function. This is most critical as attrition rate invariably occurs due to lack of job satisfaction or the wrong chemistry with the boss. Many companies to create a strong image and build credibility release full-page advertisement to attract talent. This is one way of showing the bigness of the company and communicating to the prospects that we are a large conglomerate with strong guiding principles. Some MNC’s also try follow to create a design & grid with the right tone and style and use them as a template. This holds good if the post one is advertising for is at middle level. But it is always better to try and be different even within that template to catch your audience’s attention.

PR plays an important role in building credibility and image:

While through advertising you are able to get prospects to respond. It is PR with the help of stories in HR is what helps company to establish credibility of their company. Today more and more companies are looking for opportunities to be present on exclusive and industry related stories on HR topics. With huge attrition rate and shortage of talent , stories on HR has been keeping corporates on their toes to bring in attractive and friendly HR polices to nurture and retain talent. Being present in various articles and forums by brands is also being noticed by prospects to get better understanding of the corporates before one deicide to work with a particular company. Since HR is a very important tool in building the corporate image of any organisation companies needs to be more pragmatic and innovative in evolving their PR strategy to attract and retain good talent and thereby strengthening the equity of the corporate brand in the employment market.

Adds values to the corporate brand:

A well thought out communication for a recruitment ad has direct bearing not only on the future prospects but also the stakeholders, business partners and employees within the company. A good recruitment ad also builds credibility and image of the organisation so long as the company paints the correct picture and information of the organisation. The power of recruitment ads also helps in enhancing the position of the company in the prospects mind by maintaining the right style and tone consistently in their communication. This is where creative excellence for recruitment ads will play a major role as that will motivate clients to think out of box and get their brand across in the most unique and outstanding manner instead of churning out the run of the mill formatted ads. Any piece of communication to attract talent must exhibit a good career path to entice the job seekers to respond. If that promise is delivered through strategic recruitment ads we will be able witness more and more HR personnel pushing their communication partners that much extra to create advertisements and implement hard working PR strategy to deliver great value to the brand and motivate and attract quality talent to the organisation.

Google Adsense is without doubt the most popular online advertising network and used by many small and big site owners alike. And we would love to hear how we can earn more from the system. Here are 10 useful tools to help you boost your usage of the service, understand it better, and perhaps help earn more.

Adsblacklist

Adsblacklist is a site that lists the Made for Adsense (MFA) sites and Low Cost Per Click (LCPC) ads that Google Adsense users can add to their Google Adsense Competitive Ad filter tool.  To use the Adblacklist tool, you need to register yourself and your site. Once that is done, click on the Generate Filter List link on the left hand sidebar of the Adsblacklist site. This tool can generate upto 200 MFA sites or LCPC ad sites if you have a free account, or generate all that it has in its database if you are a premier account holder. You can also contribute to Adsblacklist by reporting MFA sites or LCPC sites that you have discovered.

Adsense Earnings RSS feed

Adsense Earnings RSS feed is a script that you can use to generate a RSS feed of your Adsense earnings, clicks, or other reports. So if you are the RSS buff who wants every information on the RSS reader, this is the tool for you. To use this, simply download the script, customize it a little by adding your Adsense login information and the range of days you want to aggregate data of. Then you can upload the script on your own server or some secret place on the web.

Ads Preview and Comparison Tool

Ads Preview and Comparison Tool is an online tool that allows you to preview the ads that will appear on your site from Google Adsense, Yahoo Publisher, and Chitika.  You can preview Google Adsense text ads, adlinks, and image ads in various sizes or compare them with corresponding ads from Yahoo or Chitika. This is quite an interesting tool and you might be surprised with some of the ads that may come up on the preview.

Adsense Charts and Graphs

Adsense Charts and Graphs offers eight charts for your Adsense data based on impressions, impressions (Cumulative), clicks, clicks (Cumulative), clickthrough percentage, earnings, earnings (Cumulative), and earnings per click. If you are the type who likes to study your Adsense data thoroughly with charts and graphs, then this is the tool for you. To generate your charts, you have to download the AdSense CSV file from your account and upload it on this online tool.

The charts can come out with some useful information like when did your earnings peak, when did it subside, which are the best performing channels, etc.

AlternateURL

AlternateURL replaces the Public Service Ads from Google Adsense on your site with paying ads. You can register at the site for free and generate the AlternateURL code to use on your site instead of the Adsense code. Simple as that. AlternateURL works on a 50:50 revenue sharing model with its publishers. They pay through Paypal monthly. You can also track your click reports from your AlternateURL account page.

There is a similar service to this from Adsense through which you can color mask your ad block, use an image, or make your ad unit collapse whenever there are no paying ads to display.

ClickAider

ClickAider is an online tool that will track clicks to Google Adsesnse ads and ads from other ad networks that are displayed on your site. This can be an useful tool that will provide you information like which advertisements are the most preferred by your readers. ClickAider also tracks where your site visitors come from and which outbound links they follow from your site.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool

Google Adwords Keyword Tool is essentially an online tool for Google Adwords users but Adsense users can take advantage of it as well. You can use the tool to generate a list of top keywords on any descriptive word, phrase, or website address. The generated list of keywords are also rated based on the amount of advertisers bidding on them, search volume in a particular month, and the average search volume. This gives you a sense of high paying keywords that you can used on your site to attract high paying Adsense ads.

FilterTool

FilterTool is a cool online tool that you can use to find a list of sites whose Adsense ads are likely to come up on your site. You can pick the bad sites from this list and add them to your Adsense filter list. You can also sort out the good sites and keep them separately so that the next time you run this tool, those sites are exempted from showing up. FilterTool is available for a free trail of 14 days.

Pubmatic

Pubmatic is a tool that you can use to optimize the ads you get from your various ad networks including Adsense. Once you register at Pubmatic, you can add your Adsense account details and generate the html codes that ypu can use on your site in place of the Adsense code. That’s all. PubMatic will get the best ads in terms of size, color, text/banner/video format, etc. suitable to your site.

SysSense

SysSense is a light tool that will sit on your system tray and monitor your Adsense account. The first time you run SysSense, you will be ask to set up your Adsense account. You can provide your Google adsense login ID and password and you are done. There are lot more features here than you will find on the Firefox addon tools providing similar services. For instance, there is the currency convertor, and the auto update that you can set from anywhere between 1 minute to 5 hours. You can set what information you want SysSense to show including page impressions, clicks, clickthrough rates, effective CPM rates, or earnings.

What happened to the good old Exchange 4 Media and Agency FAQs? Where is the content? Two good examples of advertising sites overdoing the advertising.

Exchange4Media


AgencyFAQs