In short, rather than doing normal job advertising, or going through recruitment consultants, I wrote a ‘job ad’, then Nik and I put it on our blogs to see what would happen. Well guess what happened? Lots of interesting people got in touch…
We’ve had a great time meeting a range of brilliant people. Some who we’re speaking to about other jobs. Some we’re talking about collaborating with. And with others we just had a nice chat and collectively decided that it was nice to meet up, but the timing and opportunity wasn’t quite right just now.
The biggest thing that I’ve taken away from this though is about interestingness. We’ve done an extensive study and found that the applicants who’ve come through our blogs have been 34% more interesting than candidates who come through other means. Thus demonstrating that it’s not just bloggers who are attempting to be interesting, blog readers have an inherent interestingness too. Which is nice!
Oh, and we did find one in the end. But you’ll have to wait a little while before it’s all made official (you can almost see him above). Awesome!
(Plus, blog hook-ups also brought the lovely Asi to Poke too – which is a double tick for blogs as unofficial recruitment devices that get you great people).
If you’re into adventure type games. Or just want to win some great prizes. Or are a real nerd and want to see how we’ve used Google Maps as part of our quest interface. Head over to MaliceBoxQuest.com, something Poke have put together for Penguin to promote the launch of a new mystic-thriller book called, strangely enough, The Malice Box.
Tom and Cookie, two of the other Poke folk who worked on the game have also written bits about it on their blogs. In fact I think Cookie sums it all up rather well:
The book is a bit like the Da Vinci Code – a dude runs about the place, solving puzzles and saving the world…For the online game we created, you get to navigate the globe using Google maps. Basically you solve puzzles, guess locations of ‘Red Gold’ on the map and win prizes. Go check it out and play the game and at www.maliceboxquest.com/
Oh, and if you’ve been paying attention this is the game that I was trying to find a scriptwriter for ages ago! And thanks to some helpful blog readers we eventually found Tim Wright, who was great to work with. Hooray for blogs!
It’s nice when people you know start good blogs. It’s sometimes an interesting way of finding out more about someone than you used to know.
Cookie has started up made-in-england.org (I really hope the title isn’t a reference to that crappy Elton John song with a blue Ford Cortina in it), and Tom’s started hostler.com.
Both are guys who I work with at Poke and both of them have interesting things to say or share. Go have a look if you’ve got a spare mo.
Starting with the theory that everyday challenges became competitive sport over time (e.g. hunting became Javelin throwing, running away from things became competitive running) we thought it might be funny to treat email in the same way. So we’ve turned email into a competitive sport and are trying to find the best emaillers in the world.
We are actually going to have a live final early next year which I’m looking forward to, a lot. I’d love to see a top secretary battling it out against a teen-computer-game-champ.
There’s also some nice little games which show off the product features in a really sweet way AND you can get some awesome finger-sweatbands on the site ;-)
I still think the idea is pretty strong, and there’s some great bits in there. But I’ve been so close to it for so long I’m not sure whether it’s lost some of it’s focus during the process. I hope not, but I fear it might have done.
Poke are hiring. We’re looking for a new creative director.
It’s a nice place to work, or at least I think so.
We’re looking for someone quite particular. If you’re interested, or think you know someone who might be, please take a look at the job description here.
I had a great response to the last plea for help and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the web and the lovely people who sometimes read this blog might be able to help.
If you’re responsible for a successful lead, or are a successful applicant through my blog I’m sure I can furnish you with some kind of decent reward. I’m not sure what yet but we’ll work something out…
I liked this idea about capturing a day in history through blogs:
‘One Day in History’ is a one off opportunity for you to join in a mass blog for the national record. We want as many people as possible to record a ‘blog’ diary which will be stored by the British Library as a historical record of our national life.
It’s just a shame that they’re not really using blogs at all, you just submit a diary entry through the site. For me it’d be really great if they’d done it actually taking a snapshot of real peoples’ blogs on that day rather than getting them to write bespoke entries into their page. I’m sure it’ll skew the kind of things that people write and create a less accurate picture as a result. Plus the context of the design of peoples’ blogs would give it a much richer feeling and a better impression of the online world in 2006.
I guess the upside of their method is that everyone gets to enter whether they’ve got a blog or not.
Not a blog about stuff with no pesticides. Stuff about the web agency Organic. Actually they might be pesticide free too, in fact they probably are.
They’ve got a nice blog: Three Minds @ Organic. A smart blog with interesting things in it. Surprisingly not that many agencies have great blogs, Poke included (but we’re working on that right now).
I also quite like the reason they call it Three Minds:
Why the name? Great advertising was often created in “pairs” — a
copywriter and an art director. In the digital world, the creation
process is more complex. Strategists, designers, information
architects, media specialists, and technologists must come together to
create great experiences.
Quite simply, it takes ThreeMinds.
I’d argue though that maybe it should be called ManyMinds, three is far too absolute for me ;-)
Tom from Zopa said some nice things about Poke and did an email interview with me about the new Zopa site (which will soon be live, fingers crossed). It appeared in their monthly email newsletter.
Here’s a little something that we’ve been working on for Orange. Called Mod Your Mob it’s all about creating freakish versions of mobile phones. I’ve not had much to do with it, and I’m not quite sure if it’s a pisstake or not. I’m not sure anyone else is either.
If I was an independent observer I might be tempted to point at my post below (the one about user generated content). But at the same time there are some quite funny things up there. Go and have a look (if you fancy). And there is decent scooter up for grabs…
It’s only just launched and hasn’t been promoted yet, so it’s a bit quiet for now: Orange – Mod Your Mob
The above image is blatantly stolen from the excellent DigitalAgency blog. But short of retyping the whole thing I couldn’t think of any other way of doing it.
It’s from the D&AD Student Annual, written by Tony Davidson (Creative Director at Wieden + Kennedy London) and it starts off well. It’s positive and upbeat, and the sentiments behind it are all bang on. But I read it a second time, and a third time (by the fourth read I started to feel like an oddball so I stopped).
The first 1/2 of it I couldn’t agree with more. It’s all pretty much fact. Fact that the most recent Ofcom report backs up almost to the letter. And it’s not just ‘our industry’ that’s running scared. The telecoms industries, broadcast media, publishing (books, films , music, videogames), and many others besides are trying to decide whether this is the most exciting thing that ever happened, or the thing that’s going to kill them.
However, halfway through it starts to make me a bit angry. Maybe I’m just touchy and I’m not reading it right.
But to suggest that it’s only now that ‘ideas’ people are getting involved with digital sounds really arrogant and is blatantly incorrect. If there was nothing good online why are there so many people there now. They’ve not been holding off for a bunch of ideas people to come and create good content.
The underlying (and slightly sinister) message is that because we all use computers now, we should all be able to create effective and interesting digital things. Which doesn’t work for me at all. It’s like saying that an agency like Poke should be able to come up with great TV ideas because we sometimes watch television. (We can’t and don’t by the way).
And yes, we are looking at a similar set of creative qualities. But there are more of these qualities than there were before. And I do sincerely believe that there are ‘digital people’, not people who speak in zeros and ones. But people who get it. People who live, play and create in this new world.
I guess the big question for all of us is where ‘digital creativity’ comes from. And how the organisations who deliver this creativity should be structured (or not). Is it the role of traditional agencies as we know them? Where ‘creatives’ generate ideas that are fed to craftspeople who produce stuff to fill media spaces (whatever shape or size they might be)? I think there’s a bit of that going on right now. But it’s the part of the industry that spends its days talking about advertising formats and the latest cyber-lions.
Personally that’s not what excites me. I’m excited by the notion of broad integrated teams working together to explore creativity across the board. Creativity in ideas, technology, craft, copy, interaction and experience (as well as stuff that we don’t even know about yet). If you look at where the real pockets of digital innovation are happening, they’re in the companies and organisations that are employing rapid development methodologies, with tight teams of extreme talent working towards common goals that they all passionately believe in.
These people aren’t just developing bits of communication, they’re developing new products, new businesses, new companies and new industries. They’re creating new ways for people to communicate and consume. They’re building software that can fundamentally change peoples’ lives.
That’s the kind of creativity that makes me want to go to work in the morning.
Tom from 
