Hanging On by a Thread / from MediaPost

Today’s post comes to you courtesy of my Beyond The Press Release column in Marketing Daily, and opines about the work ethic of Generation Y (I’ve renamed them Y-Bother) and older workers who are struggling to find employment.

A recent article in the Palm Beach Post got my attention. I was sitting at a bar on the beach, reading -- I was playing hooky -- it had been a long week, and it was a Thursday -- yadda, yadda, yadda. Besides, I had my BlackBerry and iPad, so technically I was "working."

The headline read, "Middle-Age Workers Face a New Midlife Crisis: No Job, Little Hope."

It got me thinking: first about the fact that I was lucky enough to slip off early on a Thursday afternoon (without having to feign illness or ask permission) to have a glass of wine (or three). Second, and more importantly, that I had a career in PR and a job I absolutely love. Most of the time.

Reading these stories about people who at 49, 52, and 61 have struggled for a number of years to find work -- or upon finding work, are tasked with menial jobs that don't capitalize on their full potential -- pained me. I have never been unemployed, so I don't have firsthand experience with the fear or demoralizing effects. I can only begin to imagine, and when I do, I realize that I don't want to imagine any further.

But, back to the point. There is a huge workforce out there that has the skill set and, dare I say, balls to do whatever it takes to find a job and make it work.

Which is more than I can say about some insipid and whiny Gen Yers. Yes, how about we call them Generation "Y-Bother." Okay, maybe that's a bit strong -- probably an over-generalization (send your hate mail to Ihatevanessa@axe-to-grind.com) -- but I don't think I'm far off the target.

According to Carolyn Martin, who wrote "From High Maintenance to High Productivity: What Managers Need to Know About Generation Y," "Managers were shocked when Y ers said they would make a long-term commitment to an organization only to discover that 'long-term' meant one year." Furthermore, she found that Yers required more encouragement to stay on track and finish assignments. Now, I'm sure works such as Martin's fulfill the needs of large firms that are in the position to hire and maintain Gen Yers (entire books have been written on how to manage Generation Y), but what about smaller businesses and agencies?

In most instances, I am involved in the recruitment process at my agency and work with the practice area managers to find great talent. The hit-and-miss of this process (more miss than hit) is astounding. We consider our work environment to be very tolerant, flexible, and nurturing -- our goal is to bring out the best in our people and give them the tools and knowledge to be great.

And yet, we have found that many "Y-Bothers" are a disappointment: preferring to focus on impressing rather than doing, and not listening. Because they know it all already. Of course, you can't tell a know-it-all how to do anything.

And why should I waste my time doing so, when the Palm Beach Post is telling me that there are plenty of seasoned workers out there? These people not only know the ins and outs of the "real world," but they are also hungry, spurred on by the knowledge of what life is like hanging on by a thread.

In 2009, the Springboard Project, a business roundtable commission, found that over 61% of U.S. employers were having difficulties finding qualified workers to fill job vacancies. Furthermore, companies' biggest problems were finding candidates with sufficient "soft skills," or skills in such areas as work ethic, self-motivation, personal accountability, punctuality, time management and professionalism. In other words, companies are having a hard time finding the skills that Generation Y-Bother lacks, and aging Xers and Boomers have.

So why aren't companies hiring these aging Xers and Boomers?

Well, it appears that nobody wants to talk about it (age discrimination being a topic that companies apparently don't like to discuss), but I've heard the usual list of reasons in the PR industry: they need too much in salary; they're gone as soon as the next-best offer comes around; they've got so much experience that they're reluctant to learn new techniques; etc., etc. But guess what? These are exactly the issues that we have had with Yers.

Personally, I'd rather take a chance with someone who has proven experience, needs little training in "soft skills," and doesn't have to be encouraged (read: coddled) daily and hourly just to get a quality pitch out the door.

So as of today, we've changed our hiring policy. We're only looking for people who can bring skills and knowledge to the table, without the attitude.

Wet behind the ears need not apply.

Tablets: The New Mobile Device

My post today comes to you courtesy of the Heartland Mobile Council’s blog, where I penned a short article yesterday about tablets. Are they mobile?

Tablets have been touted as hybrid devices, filling the niche that existed between the laptop PC and the smartphone. While this may be true (just don’t tell that to anyone that was on the netbook wagon a short while ago), for marketers, the tablet is essentially a mobile device and should be treated as such – in my opinion.

With some tablets, this is a natural association to make; many look and function like souped-up versions of their manufacturers’ top-tier smartphone. But the most popular tablet, the iPad, has been positioned as unique from any existing mobile device, and so marketers have approached this platform with strategies that differ from those utilized with the mobile channel.

This, however, is changing, and as tablets become more popular will continue to change.

Part of the reason for this evolution is a gradual refinement in marketers’ approach to mobile marketing. Just a few years ago, bilateral communication, through voice or SMS (text messaging), was the pinnacle of mobile marketing. Now it is a truly rich environment, hinging as much on native apps as on the burgeoning mobile web.

While direct marketing continues to be effective, it’s no longer the only tool in any company’s marketing kit. Tablets, without the universal capability for voice and SMS communication, are the beneficiaries of this fleshed-out mobile marketing ecosystem. Many of the strategies aimed at the smartphone-owning market also translate to the tablet-owning market; rich native apps, access to the mobile web, and the combined capacity of a device that can both be taken on the go and features the computing power comparable to a laptop are all extensions of a robust mobile marketing strategy aimed at tablets.

Which, of course, leads to the other part of the reason that the tablet market will (and should be) considered a mobile market: the tablets themselves.

Since the iPad was introduced last year, the trend has been toward more, not less, direct connectivity. Apps have been developed to augment and improve the ability of most tablets to function as one-to-one communication devices, and every tablet features the critical portability aspect. The prevailing impression of tablet computers may be as couch-bound entertainment devices, but in reality, they’re built for the proverbial road.

Marketers ought to be capitalizing on these two aspects of the tablet trend. Location awareness should figure in heavily in tablet marketing strategies, just as it represents a fast-growing tactic in most mobile strategies. Apps that access the mobile web will eventually take precedence over native apps, just as that evolution is underway in the mobile sphere. Payment via tablet should become as prevalent as payment via smartphone, and tablet apps should become as monetized through placement and advertisement as mobile apps are.

By accepting that the tablet is the latest mobile technology to engage consumers – and not a ‘third-way’ niche product that necessitates a reinvention of the marketing wheel – marketers can begin to leverage this category to its fullest.

Of course, not everyone will agree with my view that the tablet is indeed a mobile device. What’s your take?

You can read the post on the HMC post here and click here for details of the HMC’s Tablet Seminar on April 13th to learn more and continue the discussion!

Welcome To The (Working) Week

Like a sommelier that also develops a gourmand’s palate, a PR maven often becomes a connoisseur of news media. Yes, it’s our stock-in-trade, but the time we spend consuming and digesting news often goes far beyond the bare minimum necessary to achieve our clients’ visibility objectives (well, at least at ThinkInk it does ).

That shameless little bit of self promotion is a long way around to saying that I love the news, and that I’ve been watching the evolution of the media business a fair bit more closely than the average observer. So, when I come across an article in the New York Times about the success of The Week, the news magazine that’s been in circulation since 2001, I feel compelled to comment on it.

The Week isn’t my favorite newsweekly (I’ve recently rekindled my love for Businessweek now it’s Bloomberg Businessweek), but I understand its appeal. The NYT describes it accurately: it’s “magazine journalism at its most functional and stripped down,” which doesn’t necessarily ring my bells, but seems perfectly tailored to a world that embraces the term ‘news feed’ to describe a chronological string of status updates and turns to Twitter to glean the wisdom of crowds.

If my dad’s era saw the great newsweeklies (TIME, Newsweek, etc.) as their source for analysis following a week’s worth of fact-first newspaper articles, then this generation is turning to The Week for fleshed-out versions of a week’s worth of electronic factoids. And they are: The Week has a circulation of 520,000, and is slated to earn $6.3 million this year.

What does this mean for us, the PR practitioners? That the story matters more than ever, even if the spin and nuance don’t necessarily make the 100-word cut.

It means that we have to work harder to find the right story – the relevant story – about our clients to meet their expectations. And it means that we have to keep finding those stories, day after day, week after week.

Because as The Week has demonstrated, media consumers just don’t have the time for anything else.