Came across this website I thought I’d share. It started out as this guy articulating what he’d learnt in his life through different mediums and now he’s opened it up so anyone can upload a little thought. The nice thing is that people have gone to a lot of effort to visually communicate their lesson.

It got me thinking about how we work creatively in recruitment marketing. Most of the time we’re trying to communicate an abstract thought through a visual medium. This can sometimes lead to quite obvious metaphors, but it can also lead to some really beautiful work. I genuinely think that the concept stage of recruitment creative is more challenging than product. Our USPs are never visible, they’re frequently nebulous and we’re usually working within much tighter budgets. Although I’m sure my colleagues in Lawton (our sister marcomms agency) have a very different point of view! Anyway, I digress, check out this website and see what you think: http://thingsihavelearnedinmylife.com

As some of you know, last year we invited clients to build their own Christmas card from us with the incentive that the winner would receive £100 to donate to their favourite charity. Well, I’m happy to announce that after careful consideration and against some fierce competition, Ed Howarth from East Sussex County Council has emerged victorious.

So that’s £100 on its way to Canine Partners who train dogs to help people with disabilities to complete everyday tasks.

Well done Ed, you’ve obviously missed your calling!

I’m just back from my honeymoon in Barbados (It was very nice, thanks for asking) and I noticed the above sign nailed to the wall of a building site. In a world of employer branding, strategic planning and general navel-gazing, it’s a good reminder that sometimes a clear message in the right place is all you need.

Two of us attended an HR Directors Summit in Birmingham last week. This is one of those events where organisations like us pay a lot of money on the promise of a number of guaranteed one-to-one meetings with the great and the good of the HR world. New business speed-dating if you like. It was an experience. The down side is that it involved two days shut in a hotel at the NEC wearing a suit and a fixed grin, manning a stand that looked good (no, it really did) but few people wanted to stop at because they were really there to learn about flexible benefits or open learning or something. So the opportunities for constructive networking were actually fairly limited. That said, we did have 16 prearranged meetings of 30 minutes each. We had spent a long time preparing for each of these and, on the whole, were rewarded with constructive conversations on topics that mainly centred around Employer Branding and Internal Communications. It’s not an approach to business development I would recommend for the faint hearted and it is early days yet as we begin following up the leads. But we hope the investment proves worthwhile and will keep the blog updating with news. Watch this space!