Advertisers compete for the online podium – The Globe and Mail

The London Olympics officially open Friday, but just like the athletes that will parade through the opening ceremonies, the most aggressive and savviest advertisers began staring down their competition far in advance of this moment. In the ad world, the Games began months ago.

In a sign of a broader trend, Procter & Gamble has been targeting pre-Olympic advertising as intensely as it would ads during the Games. P&G has gone hard on Web advertising, releasing ads online before they hit TV.

We intentionally chose to launch a digital-first campaign,” said David Grisim, associate marketing director at P&G Canada. “By launching digitally first, we found that we got a much higher level of engagement than we would in a traditional campaign.”

Olympic sponsors have collectively spent millions to be associated with the Games, and cannot afford to rely on traditional TV advertising to make good on that investment. P&G needed to encourage people to watch and share the ads so that by the time they are seen on television, they are well-known. Its campaign focuses on the mothers behind the athletes, and was promoted heavily on social media to create an early connection, especially with moms, who are a target market for many of its products. A video featuring Canadian triathlete Paula Findlay and her mother, part of a series of “Raising an Olympian” online videos, is a good example of the maternal tearjerker theme.

The results have been better than expected: In Canada, its “Best Job” commercial reached 150,000 views on YouTube in its first week after launching in April. Since then, 1.4 million Canadians have seen it. An even more important metric for P&G is that an average of one in three viewers shared the video with others.

“We’ve never seen numbers like that,” Mr. Grisim said.

via Advertisers compete for the online podium – The Globe and Mail.

Strange Random Olympics Quote:

“Here’s a good trick.
Get a job as a judge at the Olympics. Then, if some guy sets a world record, pretend that you didn’t see it and go: Okay, is everybody ready to start now?” ― Jack Handey

 

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British graduates not fit to start work, say majority of bosses – Telegraph

Image via Wikipedia

The survey of some of the country’s biggest businesses found three in four bosses believe graduate skills are poor.

The poll, of firms including HSBC, Santander, KPMG and Procter & Gamble, found widespread concern of the quality of potential recruits.

Researchers found that thousands of young people arrive at interviews without the “vital employability skills” required by employers such as having a suitable grasp of English, being punctual and having a general “can do” attitude.

The study, commissioned by the Young Enterprise charity, found that the problems compounded the current recruitment crisis affecting young people from teenage school leavers through to university graduates.

Asked to identify which skills were lacking in their new recruits, one told researchers that there were “too many to list”.

via British graduates not fit to start work, say majority of bosses – Telegraph.

Strange Random Hard Work Quote:

The three great essentials to achieve anything worth while are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense. – Thomas Edison

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