The short version:
We are inviting applications from consultants at senior and mid-weight levels to join our growing team of specialist social media practioners. We have one vacancy immediately, and possibly another soon. Please find out more here and apply.
The long version:
A while back I announced, in a blaze of glory*, our search for a PR Pirate – someone to come from the ‘traditional PR’ world and help our clients with their new digital communications strategies.
Unfortunately, no sooner had I launched the search than we won a couple of significant pieces of work which this new team member would’ve – in an ideal world – helped to deliver. Instead, Anna and I went into full-blown delivery mode, which meant that the hiring process went on ice. There was literally no time (OK, not literally).
Being upfront, there were also issues with the hiring process, which was no bed of roses**:
- the title I gave the role of Account Director didn’t meet the scope of the role, which my PR pals told me was more what you’d call a ‘Board Director’ – a naive mistake on my behalf
- the double-bubble challenge of finding someone this niche AND keen on living or already living in Brighton seemed to restrict the number of the most senior-level candidates
Something good has come out of all of this, though.
Having done the work ourselves so far, Anna and I have been able to evolve a much clearer of understanding of what the company does and DOESN’T need. My understanding of how we’re going to shape our teams in the future has evolved, and I’ve been refining these ideas with Jenni, Pete and Tom.
As a result we now have a clearer idea of our needs.
We were building here at NixonMcInnes is a hybrid consultancy offering clients a range of services focused not by the ‘what we do’ but by the ‘where we do it’.
The ‘what we do’ range of services now regularly spans Research, Strategy & Planning, Training, Digital PR and Design & Build. This range gets our clients from ‘don’t know a thing’ to ‘actively engaging’.
The ‘where we do it’ remains the same as we continue to grow and enhance our ability to help clients in the specialised and evolving sphere of social media.
So our needs are a little broader than when we kicked off the search before.
We would still love for a senior consultant from a PR background to be this next hire: that will be spiffing if it happens. But equally we are now more open-minded to the benefits that someone from a market research, online marketing, agency planning or other related discipline can bring. Because our clients need help in a range of areas.
So if you or someone you know is passionately online, and keen to participate in how the internet is changing the world we live in from an HQ here in Brighton, UK, please read the job description and get in touch.
Alternatively, if anything is unclear or you have some feedback, I’m almost all ears. Thank you.
(* and ** are Bon Jovi references. No idea why).
Will McInnes wrote this on 11.11.08 – what do you think?
It's filed in the Brighton, Recruitment, Social media, Strategy box
We are looking for a pirate, a special kind of PR pro, someone with the experience and streetsmarts of an Account Director, to join our unusual progressive team and help change the world.
You see, when it comes to revolutions, to really being innovative, and brave, and different, the majority of people like to talk about it, but don’t really do it. People talk about and read about being pirates, but then they join the Navy.
We’re actually doing it.
We have the clients, the brand, the reputation, the Brighton HQ* and digital cojones to deliver against the mixed up, multi-channel, fragmented media future.
We are pirates: we are a social media agency. (Probably the UK’s largest, if size makes you feel fizzy down there.)
Our agency is a modern hybrid and now spans consultants, user experience specialists, brand experts, designers, project managers and web developers. We take our clients through awareness and education, to strategic and tactical planning, through to full service digital design and build to actually deliver real changes to our clients digital marketing communications.
We are blended…but we want to enhance a key part of the blend – we clearly need a seasoned, experienced, clever PR practitioner to add their goodness to the blend. We have now won a number of clients where our key contact and decision maker is from the PR side of the client organisation. We want to take the old PR pie, and eat it the parts of it that are stale, dulled, and left currently sat untouched.
The opportunity.
- The opportunity is to create and oversee the delivery of hybrid services which evolve and take the best of traditional PR and soak and enrich it (and yourself) in a spicy hot digital stew, and to deliver those new dishes to a hungry clientele who are listening to, learning from you, and wanting more of what you’ve got. Those clientele are also blended in terms of which part of their organisation they come from: from marketing, PR, internal communications and more.
- The opportunity is to enable client organisations to transform how they communicate with their publics and adapt how they think of and then ‘do’ engagement, and landscape, and influencers, and their role internally.
- The opportunity is to be special. To be the first ‘from PR originally‘ practitioner in a team of top talent.
- To change how clients perceive what an agency can give them.
- The opportunity is to be really different, and to keep being more and more different, and to be sought out for that difference by clients, by peers, by co-workers and journalists and conference organisers and everyone else who wonders how the future might look while you’re getting on and creating it.
- The opportunity is to really make a difference and a dent in the navel-gazing incestuous nest (hey, we know – we’re part of it!) of marketing services agencies.
- The opportunity is to tell me as a peer to stop writing ridiculous metaphor-ridden hyperbole, and stand shoulder to shoulder with peers, amongst a flatly-structured team of really nice people that care about their work.
* Before I forget, why highlight our location in Brighton?
Because our community here is a real-world digital network: we have Club Penguin and Second Life European HQs here, we have iCrossing UK HQ here and a bunch of search marketing companies with enviable client bases, we have leaders in mobile development like Future Platforms and Babel, some incredible TV production companies, a strong but boring cluster of e-learning companies (soz.). ‘Convergence’ is actually visible and tangible in the Brighton business community.
But it’s not always and forever sparkling. Reality bites hard.
We work very hard to hit sales and production targets – it’s tiring, and fast-paced and basically full on. We miss deadlines. We lose pitches. We screw up and disagree. Life is hard (and then you die). This won’t be my Ozymandias moment, and our humility belies this kind of hype-y sexy revolutionary pitch. As our first out-and-out PR specialist and our first dedicated Account Director we will look to you for results and commitment. It isn’t easy being a pirate.
But the two don’t have to be exclusive: operationally, we deal with the realities of gritty business; strategically, we reach for the stars!
“It’s better to be a Pirate than to join the Navy” - Steve Jobs.
He’s right. Come be a pirate.
Interested or know someone?
Job description including outline of rewards, all in a much more sensible and straightforward fashion.
Will McInnes wrote this on 16.07.08 – 3 comments
It's filed in the NixonMcInnes box
Coworking most definitely fits into the ‘useful, important, enjoyable and therefore coming to a place near you’ basket, the same basket that contains unconferences, lightweight structures, wikis and wikification in general, democratic working practices and yes, Twitter ;)
What they share is a new remoulding and levelling of the world, a move towards collaboration over command and control, a shift towards warm, human and flexible over cold, automated and rigid: just a better way of doing things, where the fluidity and sharing that is enabled by the Internet and portable easy to use technology (mobile phones, mobile internet, laptops, stuff) are embraced and exploited to their full extent.
If you’re new to the coworking concept you can find learn more by reading this NYT article on coworking in general or indoctrinate yourself on the Coworking Wiki.
Coworking has real momentum, although many with a more historical bent would have no truck with this recent-schmecent rubbish: look at medieval guilds and the like, as Dan McQuillan suggests. Yet again Tara Hunt is at the heart of the recent digital rejuvination of this grassroots-style movement (hats off to she that makes good things happen).
Today I needed to be somewhere else: home would be too crazy; the office would be too interrupted. I had to make serious headway in developing some training materials and needed a productive working environment with low hassle high bandwidth wifi, light, space and Brighton & Hove coworking space The Werks came to mind.
I don’t know an awful lot about The Werks’ story but I do not that their Friday co-working – where all and sundry are welcome for a spot o’ co-working – has gained and gained and gained momentum over time, and that my regular Friday appointments with our business advisor and team lunches have kept me away, but at an interested and enthusiastic arm’s length.
When we recently used a Werks meeting space for a client workshop James mentioned that co-working is now anyday of the week (a good decision all round I reckon) meaning that those wanting a drop-in desk space (or sofa!) can pop in free of charge and get involved. Wickedly nice gift to the community, if ever there was one. So I took James up.
It werked wonderfully for me.
Although I have to confess I didn’t really cowork as work in a coworking space, given my deadline and the need to focus. But I did catch up with the very nice Richard Dallaway, local community pillar Rosie Sherry, the talented Josh and Dave and met for the first time Jim Callender who’s been a contact on Flickr and then Twitter <californian accent> for like ages </californian accent>(Wow, what geekery – marketing guy using pseudo HTML in blog posts, time to buy that farm in Patagonia methinks).
Next time I’ll go with less specific tasks to complete and more of a nosey, collaborative attitude. And I’ll seek to give as much as I can.
But even so, perhaps there’s the rub: though I was focused and working and productive and largely opting out via headphones (and not knowing most of the others on my bustling table of 7 or so other peeps) I still managed to chat to good people I rarely see and have the space to talk with. It was actually really nice.
I love what James and his gang of supporters have been able to achieve. And I can see how the momentum and success is going to grow. The Werks is a wonderful experiment that’s working: the metaphorical petri dish is bubbling with growth and energy, and I’m just delighted that we – the Brighton digital community – have such a wonderful asset to take from and give to.
Will McInnes wrote this on 27.05.08 – 1 comment
It's filed in the Brighton, NixonMcInnes box
