Be careful what you wish for!

Meet Moomin…

Today I am working from home, this isn’t really a matter of choice, but more a combination of sleep deprivation and a fear of what would happen to my house in my absence.

One of the nice things about cats is that they instinctively deposit their waste into neat little litter trays or kindly bury it in the ground where we never have to see, smell or think about it again. I’ve been reading up on kitten behavior recently and apparently this is an evolutionary trait that stems back to a time before cats were domesticated, when burying their waste was a way of avoiding detection by larger, more dominant animals and leaving their smelly deposits out in the open was a way of dictating the boundaries of their territory.

When it comes to domesticated cats cohabiting with humans the same rules apply. So when a cat intentionally leaves its poop in a conspicuous location it is essentially saying I iz a bad ass kitteh, and all this is MINE.

So far Moomin’s favourite game has been to find new and increasingly more annoying places to leave little presents like this for me to find, (sorry if this picture offends anyone.)

My kitten was supposed to come litter trained – not true!

Her second favourite game is called Bite Bite Bite, this basically involves charging around the house in attack mode – main target zones fingers, toes and ankles, bonus points if she can draw blood.

The Scratchy game is more directed at the destruction of inanimate objects, this includes but is not limited to rugs, curtains, carpets and sofas.

Finally, I think her secret mission might be to never let me sleep again!

Despite me creating a lovely snuggly bed for her and my continued attempts right through the night to place her back in it, she is determined that the only place she will sleep is in my face.  This, combined with repeated toilet incidents has resulted in me having to go to bed in a sleeping bag on a mattress covered in plastic. Throw in the intermittent whining, midnight psychotic bursts of energy and teeth marks on any bit of skin that dared to move or poke out from beneath the covers. I think my kitty might be a little bit evil…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Professor Green- Star Guest, with 450,000 Twitter followers and up to 150,000 click-throughs per tweet

VAN attended the first ever IAB Video Engage last week to absorb some interesting stuff from a host of top industry experts. Thought-leaders and directors from YouTube, ITV, JWT and more gave talks about the role of online video and posed some interesting questions about the future:

How will online video change in a more multi-platform environment? Is TV going to remain the king of video advertising? How is the rise of emerging markets going to effect business models? Can you ever escape Nyan Cat?

Here are some things worth knowing, taken from the full review on the IAB website:

• 28 million of the 39 million people online watch video content on a laptop/PC (UKOM). The average video viewer watches 96 videos a month, for 4 ½ hours.

• YouTube: “Half of our ads are now skippable”.

• Starcom Mediavest: Connected TVs will be the game changer for online video.

• ITV: “The TV kingdom is in good health with new allies on the horizon”.

• Yahoo: Shortform video – the sweet spot between consumer and commercial quality.

• EMI: online video offers access between artist and fan, and new revenue opportunities.

• Professor Green: Online video is about choice, giving fans what they want, when they want.

• Reckitt Benckiser: We’ve been using online video for five years, we know it works, and it works well.

• The click is antiquated – measure the value not the click, Chris Worrell, Specific Media.

To promote the launch of the new doughnut range by Greggs the Bakers, the agency Steel London created a fun digital campaign, bringing the little icing covered dough balls to life and pitting them against each other in an X-Factor style popularity contest on YouTube.

It was an all out PR battle to win the nations hearts and competition was intense. There were pleas and pledges aplenty, and with each doughnut having its own Facebook and Twitter profile, it wasn’t long before they had racked up thousands of followers and more than 1.4m doughnuts have been sold already in the  five weeks since their introduction.

At the end of the day, when the last crumbs had been guzzled and the sticky goo licked off the plate there was one clear winner that stole the title of Super Star Doughnut from under the nose of the rest… congratulations to Jaffa Cake Doughnut!

Now, over to the VAN doughnut challenge…

We had slightly mixed reviews on the doughnut front, with some less hardcore doughnut gobblers not quite able to handle to gloopy innards, but overall the treats went down well and the sugar buzz has been rippling through the office all afternoon! The winner by common consensus was…. the brown one! (Exact flavour unconfirmed – possibly hazelnut?).

Ben from across the office in the Delib team is a bit of a confectionary guru, in fact he has his very own biscuit blog, which is well worth a read if you want some serious baking insight! He had this to say on the matter…

“Not only were a wide selection of exotic and vaguely palatable doughnuts on offer, but also the pollsters themselves were able to eloquently describe the options available and the kind of opinion they were looking to collate.  Their methodology was sound and so far no-one appears to have died as a result of taking part.  Overall then VAN managed to avoid their usual monosyllabic speech patterns and instead deliver a piece of imperious scientific research.  Back slaps all round.”

Um, thanks Ben!

What does VAN do?

• We seed great viral ads to great sites so people can enjoy and share them.
• We work with some of the best ad agencies in the world, generating views and sharing for their brand campaigns, especially their YouTube videos. We’re based in Bristol and London UK.
• We’re growing fast, and we offer an outstanding opportunity for graduates or people who are starting their career in marketing, advertising and digital media. It’s a great learning environment.

What’s the job?
This is an awesome way to get started in the industry. You get to work with great clients and great content, and you’ll pick up key skills in account management, pitching, planning, media buying and reporting. We hope you’ll stick around for a couple of years, but we’ll train you in ways that give you a great preparation to step up to your next position.

The role has a clear structure, with three key responsibilities:

• Supporting our sales team by preparing proposals for clients.
• Setting up campaigns and making media bookings with our network of publishers.
• Account management and reporting to our clients.

In detail…

Supporting our sales team
Our London-based sales team deal with the majority of client meetings, and pitching.
You’ll need to write proposal documents to support them. These need to be turned around quickly and accurately, and be sensitive to the client’s specific needs.
You will not be required to cold sell in this role, but you will need to work with the rest of the team to achieve the monthly sales target.
You will need to develop and close warm leads that come in directly by phone or email.
Developing account relationships and retaining clients by providing consistently good service is essential for sales.

Campaign Operations (daily)
It’s critical that we meet our promises to clients, getting them the views they need in the agreed timeframe.
You’ll need to plan and book media placements for campaigns, working with the rest of the team to make sure that we deliver on all client campaigns. The campaign needs to be monitored for progress throughout, and action taken to resolve any issues.
We report progress to clients using a dashboard system during the campaign then delivering a final report at the end. You’ll need to ensure the dashboard is up to date, and produce the final report (we have standard formats for doing this).
Where necessary, you’ll need to develop and maintain relationships with publishers directly to make sure that campaigns meet their targets.

Client handling & sales (daily)
Account management duties, including:

• Responding to client requests by phone and email.
• Maintaining the agency-client relationship throughout campaigns.
• Reporting and following up on campaigns
• Developing relationships to drive repeat business.

Additional responsibilities
Occasionally you’ll need to assisting with marketing, including prep of campaign case studies.
We improve the product and service continuously, looking for more efficiency and better results for our clients. You’ll need to contribute to this & work quickly to adopt changes and improvements.

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What you’re like
This is a job for people who:

• Are comfortable with numbers, especially straightforward arithmetic.
• Enjoy talking to people by phone and email to develop relationships.
• Work hard (cliche, but true here). It’s a job where you need to get your tasks done to time. It can also be necessary to check campaign progress out of office hours (using online systems).
• Have solid writing skills: we don’t have time to check your spelling etc, and we’re working with clients who will judge us negatively if you can’t write clearly and accurately.

The type of work is fairly consistent and suits someone who is happy to do similar tasks on a daily basis. That said, the job is exciting: new opportunities come up, new proposals need to be done, we get sales wins and awesome content to seed, and campaigns need to get their views.

You will definitely need:

• A good degree. Everybody here has proven themselves.
• A genuine desire to get stuck into work and take responsibility.
• Previous work experience, this can be anything dealing with people or a task based role. It doesn’t have to be relevant to marketing or online, but we don’t have time to teach you the most basic professional and get-things-done skills.

Salary and progression

• Within the role, you can progress from ‘novice’ to ‘ninja’. This would take a couple of years. A novice gets paid £16.8k, and a ninja would get around £25k.
• There’s healthy profit share on top for all staff (linked to company performance), and a success club (team rewards for making monthly sales target).
• There’s a wide range of progression opportunities when it’s time to move on from this role. There may be opportunities to move up within VAN taking management responsibility for aspects of sales or operations, or moving elsewhere within the Team Rubber group. It’s also a great stepping stone into agencies or client-side marketing, giving a solid grounding in account management, media planning and buying, and campaign operations.

Or get the lowdown on the job with these words from Katrina (who is leaving VAN for a role running operations elsewhere).

Interested? Feel free to read more, but to apply mail Ally with a covering letter outlining why you think you are suitable for the position and where your strengths lie, along with a 2 page CV.

cheers http://memegenerator.net/ninja-cat

….and keep your eye out for the upcoming vids!

The highlights from the Viral Brand Chart this week include ‘Ape with AK-47′, one of a series of  teasers for the new Planet of the Apes movie. The clip is part of 20th Century Fox’s apparent ‘research library’ for the film and shows a group of African Soldiers handing a loaded rifle to an ape, with unsurprising results.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Followed by ‘Crazy Marriage Proposal’, the latest viral by Neuro Water. With some cleverly placed product branding we watch as a man throws himself off a building as part of an elaborate proposal stunt to impress his girlfriend.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And of course the trailer for ‘The Story of Snape’, the final part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now, over to the User Generated Chart and topping the bill is ‘Trolling Saruman’

Click here to view the embedded video.

The awesome ‘Madeon- Pop Culture (live mashup)

Click here to view the embedded video.

And my personal favourite, ‘How to deactivate a cat’

Click here to view the embedded video.

Check out New Media Age’s Viral Chart to view more of the latest awesome trending virals!