The Kindred blog

We're Recruiting

Business is good at Kindred HQ, so we’re looking for bright, keen people with big ideas to join our growing team. We’re looking for people with a positive outlook who’ll bring a little ray of sunshine to our day, have excellent attention to detail and the desire to develop quickly, be proactive and go above and beyond the call of duty in everything they do.

Sound like you? Then take a look at the roles we have on offer below and get in touch on kelly.pullen@kindredagency.com – we’d love to hear from you.

AE Role 1:
We’re looking for a Graduate (or equivalent) with about a year’s experience (paid or work experience) to join the Blistex and LA fitness team at Kindred. This is predominantly an advertising role, so advertising skills and experience are a must, but a healthy curiosity and interest in the other disciplines is desirable.  

AE Role 2:
We’re also looking for a Graduate (or equivalent) with six month to a year’s experience (paid or work experience) to join our PR team. Media relations experience is a must, ideally in the consumer field. Again, this is predominantly a PR role, but an interest in wider disciplines, including social media and design, is a bonus.

Junior Community Manager
On the social media side, we’re looking for a Junior Community Manager with a passion for blogging, micro-blogging and relationship building. You must live and breathe social media on a daily basis and be up to speed with all major social networks. The role includes managing consumer facing communities so an imaginative approach to content development around popular culture, music, fashion, design and celebrity themes is key; as well as contributing to the Kindred blog and internal training.

AE / AM:
Finally, we are looking for a bright, keen AE with about a two years’ experience. As with the first role, this is predominantly an advertising and design position, so advertising / design skills and experience are a must – with the usual caveats around showing an interest in other disciplines!

Now is a really exciting time to join Kindred – we’ve just bought the agency, making us independent again, and we’re blazing a trail in truly integrated communications encompassing advertising, design, PR and social media. Have a look at these films to see the sort of thing we’re up to – then send us your CV!

Trained baristas now working at Kindred

This morning Sinead and George from the ‘make mine Milk’ team hosted a coffee morning with a difference – all for a group of very lovely mummy bloggers. After a not too early start and a delicious breakfast- courtesy of the London School of Coffee - our bloggers (Metropolitan Mum, Family Affairs and Other Matters, Babes About Town, The Coffee Lady, Mummys Busy World, Jessica Milln’s Blog, Mummys Shoes) gathered round to learn the art of ‘cupping’ – a technique used to observe the tastes and aromas of different coffees. Being far too polite to use a spittoon but not too ashamed to slurp and gurgle the coffees, our bloggers tasted beans from all around the world.

The next stage of the training revolved around making the perfect Latte and Cappuccino – and this was not easy! The process to coffee perfection is so fine-tuned that some of the creations had a lot to be desired but with a competition looming (after all we had two A-Team rucksacks up for grabs!) the basics had to be mastered.

Next, our bloggers tested their latte art skills which again, was not easy  to master but there were certainly some great attempts. Congratulations to Metropolitan Mum who won the prize for ‘best coffee art’ and Family Affairs and Other Matters for the ‘best tasting coffee’.

The morning ended with a natter about ‘make mine Milk’ and of course a fabulous cup of coffee. Thanks again to the London School of Coffee for putting on such a great morning.

(download)

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We're loving the RFP process in 2010...

Geo-Location – Beyond the Hype

It was all about mobile down at Ad:Tech 2010 and the agencies were out in force, from mobile ad networks, app developers and coupon companies. Geo-location (as expected) was the buzz word of the exhibition which, once you get an understanding of how sophisticated the incentivising and tracking has now got (and with fewer barriers to entry), it’s no wonder this is one of the leading trends for marketing activity in 2011.

With Apple surpassing 100 million in iOS device sales and the predicted growth of mobile coupon usage to 300 million by 2014, more and more brands are starting to embrace the use of geo location technology  for incentivising and rewarding customers (currently there are over 3,000 location based offers running in the UK according to agency,  VouChaCha). Also, with Facebook Places launching last week, geo location services are being brought to the masses and are no longer just for the early adopters who dived into services such as Foursquare and Gowalla.

So a few tips and advice for brands wanting to explore mobile as a viable marketing channel:

•  Ensure that your website is optimised for mobile. Seems a no-brainer but many sites are not
•  Know your platforms and where your target audience exists. The iPhone is not the only smartphone out there and many apps are now being produced for multiple devices
• Set out your objectives – what are you trying to achieve? Is it footfall to a store, increased sales or simply raising awareness of a product or service?  

Mobile trends predicted to be big:

• QR (Quick Response) Codes: Calvin Klein Jeans Replaces Racy Billboards with QR codes
• Augmented Reality: Mobile phones get cyborg vision / Museum of London launches incredible augmented-reality iPhone
• NFC (Near Field Communication) for quick mobile payments: Nokia says all of its smartphones will support NFC starting next year / Nokia teases Swipe NFC payment system for digital receipts

Despite many of these trends having been around for a few years (and never really taking off in the UK) the widespread use of smartphones and growing awareness of geo-location services means that brands can really start to get creative with mobile executions be it serving exclusive content for direct engagement or incentivising through promotional offers. Mobile marketing has certainly gone beyond that ‘hype stage’ and is definitely a marketing channel to watch as more brands start to experiment.

How to get the most out of LinkedIn

With 3.2 million UK users and a market value of over $2 billion, LinkedIn is no longer just a fishing pool for recruitment agencies and head-hunters. It is now a viable business networking and resource tools which works most effectively with the more connections you have. So, start connecting and make the most out of all the new functionalities which are available (new apps, group features, plug-ins).

Growing your network

Think about who you may have worked for in the past and who you have everyday contact with. The Outlook toolbar add on is a useful way of inviting email contacts quickly and efficiently without having to login in to LinkedIn. It also offers you a quick profile summary (to see if you have any other connections in common) and a dashboard, allowing you to stay up to date with your network. Optimizing your URL also allows you to be more visible to others as profiles tend to rank highly in Google. This is done by editing the URL LinkedIn has given you by default and replacing it with your name. [Edit Profile > Public Profile Edit > Your Public Profile URL Edit]. Do remember however, contacts are clearly visible to others and some companies do have social media policies which include conditions around accepting particular invites (typically recruiters – no surprise there).  Also, it is bad practice to invite people you have not met in person. By doing this repeatedly (more than three times), you run the risk of your profile being shut down.

LinkedIn Groups

The new look Group pages have made the channel a useful resource in souring expert advice, sense checking ideas and finding relevant industry news/updates. The visibility of new posts and ease of ‘liking’ a comment or leaving your own response means that joining in the conversation is as simple as it can be, leading to more people getting involved in group discussions and passing on their expertise.

My advice would be start joining as many relevant groups as possible and join the conversation. This means demonstrating your own expertise by answering questions and passing on insights. Adding this value to a group not only means you look smarter – LinkedIn will now highlight top contributors in their ‘Top Influencers This Week’ widget -  but introduces you to like-minded people (that may be out of your network) who could return the favour in future.

In summary some top tips...

Must Do’s

•  Populate your profile and keep this fresh and up to date
•  Maximise you connections
• Optimise your URL
• Download the Outlook toolbar (if using Outlook)
• Join groups and get involved – start discussion topics, answer questions and add value

Good to Do

• Research into the applications available which can be added to your profile as there may be plug-ins which could be of use (eg: the Slideshare or WordPress app)
•  If you have a Twitter feed which is business facing, sync with LinkedIn (and/or vice versa) for maximum exposure of your business expertise

To keep up to date with developments on LinkedIn – check out their corporate blog

Forward thinking brands experimenting online...Kindred = #prcaexperts

On Thursday, George, Kindred's Social Media Manager (@GeorgieC) hosted an early morning PRCA briefing on brands experimenting online. Imparting her knowledge to a crowd, keen to hear her thoughts on the various digital executions and future trends, George discussed the subjects of relationship building, loyalty, integration and content generation. To find out more, check out George's Prezi below which includes a number of useful stats and casestudies:

Blogger relations: ‘what’s the secret?’ – part one

Recently there’s been lots of talk about how PRs will make the transition from traditional media relations to blogger engagement, not simply from the PRs’ perspective but from bloggers, inundated with emails, stating ‘this is how we want to be approached!’  The good news is it really isn’t that difficult.  Both require the same skills; it’s just about adapting them for a new medium.  

Although there is a definite shift away from issuing a press release (but let’s be honest, the significance of the humble press release was beginning to wane with the growing fragmentation of media channels) one fundamental similarly still exists – a good PR knows how to build a strong, multi-beneficial relationship. The way you go about forging that relationship may differ but the ability to build a quick rapport and get your message across succinctly, hasn’t changed.

When targeting bloggers think about adopting a three step approach: 1) Research, 2) Engagement, 3) Nurture

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