RBS: brand director Charlie Smith has left

Martin Wise, who previously held a senior product role within RBS, has been named group head of marketing. He replaces outgoing managing director for marketing and innovation Helen Page. A new set of senior marketers will report to Wise, with internal replacements being appointed.

As a result, it is understood that several marketers will leave the organisation. RBS and NatWest brand director Charlie Smith, who joined the bank in 2010, has already taken voluntary redundancy. RBS/NatWest head of marketing communications Richard Blyth is also to leave the business.

An RBS spokesman conmented: ‘As part of our approach to become the UK’s most Helpful Bank a review of our Marketing structure is ongoing. As result of that review, both Charlie Smith and Richard Blyth left RBS in February to pursue other opportunities.’

The restructure has been overseen by RBS managing director of retail products, Les Matheson.

RBS will be keen to assert some stability in its marketing team, following the protracted departure of former lead marketer Page and director of customer strategy and marketing planning Richard Cole, who departed for bookmaker Ladbrokes in August.

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If you can claim to be a data scientist and have the chops to back that up, you can pretty much write your own ticket even in this tough job market. A quick search of the popular job posting sites –Indeed.com, SimplyHired.com, or Dice.com – shows a huge demand for data scientists or anyone who can demonstrate other “big data”skills.

The reason? Companies in all industries now understand that they need to make better sense of the massive data sets at their disposal — data sets that can include computer log files, social networking feeds, digital video or audio, you name it.

That’s led to a spike in demand for data scientists — professionals that understand math and statistics but also have a flare for “art.” They understand how to display or visualize that raw information so its value can be understood. Petabytes of data are useless if no one can make sense of it.

Some headhunters have gotten creative, emailing reporters who cover the beat looking for recommendations. Here’s one recent email:

My client is one of the largest professional services firms in the world and they are looking for very senior data analytics experts who can apply his/her advanced analytics, predictive modeling, and data visualization skills to the fraud/dispute arena.  Exceptional compensation packages are available in the $300,000 to $500,000 range for the appropriate technical and leadership experience.

(Send me email if you want more info.)

Alice Hill, managing director for Dice.com, said her company just started tracking the category in December so it’s too early to have long-term comparisons of starting salaries or number of posts over time, but big data is nonetheless hot. “We can see shortages coming and when there are shortages, salaries go up,” she said.

“We’re starting to see terms like data scientist, natural language processing, showing up in many industries — it’ s not just mobile, not just high-tech companies,” said Hill. “The biggest thing about big data is it crosses every single industry. Wal-Mart was one of the first to start looking because of all the RFID chips and the tracking and supply chain management needs it has. “

She sees big data posts in financial services, in retail, in e-commerce. According to recent Dice posts, Amazon is looking for a data scientist in seattle, Sears Holdings seeks a Hadoop administrator in Chicago; and Cision wants a “wicked smart” software engineer/Big Data in Chicago.

The VP of a big data-related vendor on the east coast just finished a sweep of career fairs at a number of universities in search of a research scientist — someone who can help develop algorithms for machine learning and for core Java developers, programmers to take those algorithms and implement them in scalable compute environments like Hadoop and Cassandra.

But he also sees a burgeoning need for a “data scientist” staff position. That person would head up all the data aggregation and the big data architecture. People with the tech skills for that job are incredibly valuable, he said.

While he didn’t have hard numbers on data scientist salaries specifically, he did say that in the Washington, D.C., area, a sales engineer that understands big data analytics and can implement a Hadoop architecture can command at least a 25 percent premium in salary over another highly technical sales engineer without those skills, he said.

As more companies gear up their big data efforts, the imbalance between supply and demand of big data expertise will not evaporate any time soon. Big data and the skills necessary to make sense of it will be on the agenda at GigaOM’s Structure: Data Conference in New York next month.

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BP: Olympic sponsorship has boosted company’s image says study

BP is the official oil and gas partner of the London Olympics and will provide fuel for more than 5,000 official vehicles during the 2012 Games, the carbon emissions from which it will offset under an environmental initiative.

BP is also sponsoring the 2012 Cultural Olympiad and the London 2012 Festival in the UK.

The research, part of a larger sample across all Olympic sponsors, makes largely positive reading for BP, which is still grappling to resurrect its brand image following the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster in 2010.

The research reveals that only 18% of those polled were not aware of BP’s sponsorship of London 2012,  which contradicts previous research that showedconsumer apathy towards Olympic sponsors.

Of those aware of BP’s sponsorship of the Olympics, 38% believe that BP had been getting better at working towards a cleaner planet.

A total of 13% of those polled – a third higher than in August 2011 – were aware of BP’s sponsorship of the games.

Alastair Macdonald, director of sponsorship insights at Havas Sports & Entertainments, said: “These results provide persuasive evidence that sponsoring the Olympics Games can make a real difference to how people perceive a brand.”

The research involved a total online sample of 3,192 UK adults and was undertaken to identify the effect of Olympic games sponsorship on sponsors’ brands.

Havas is to conduct further research across top Olympics sponsors, such as Coca-Cola and McDonalds.

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Facebook: readies mobile ad service

According to the report, Facebook has discussed plans with advertising agencies about introducing the “featured stories” ads, which are based on the Sponsored Story format, into users’ timelines on mobile devices as early as March,ahead of its initial public offering.

It did not specify whether ads would be served on the Facebook Messenger app, as well as its main app.

With an IPO on the horizon, which could see Facebook valued at $100bn, the company is looking a new ways of generating advertising revenues to justify this valuation.

In December it claimed to have 425 million monthly active users using its mobile products, which is around half of its total monthly active users.

Advertising on mobile has been for a long time predicted as the next logical step for the company.

At the start of the year, Facebook paved the way for mobile advertising, by rolling out “featured stories” within users’ news feeds for the first time.

Last week, Simon Mansell, chief executive of TBG Digital, the Facebook advertising specialist agency, told Media Week that mobile advertising is the “next obvious and short term step” for Facebook.

He said: “A big question is how will Facebook bring further value without upsetting its user base.”

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Could the app economy be the cure for the United States’ employment doldrums? A new report suggests that the nascent app economy spurred on by iOS, Android and Facebook apps has generated 466,000 jobs in the U.S. economy since 2007.

In the report by technology trade group TechNet, Michael Mandel of the South Mountain Economics, who conducted the research, found that 311,000 app-related jobs have been generated and another 155,000 jobs have also been indirectly created from the app boom. The figures are estimates and are based on calculations on the existing market for app-related jobs. Mandel warns that the figures could represent “jobs not lost” rather than net jobs gained.

But if the latter is true, it starts to paint a broader picture of the economic benefit from apps, which have only really been around in force for the last four years. We’ve already talked about some of the revenue brought in by apps and where it’s forecast to hit. Gartner said last year it expected mobile app stores to generate $15 billion in revenue in 2011. But it’s interesting to see how many actual jobs might be at work in this emerging economy. App jobs can be found in big software and gaming companies like Electronic Arts and Zynga to small one person start-ups working out of a home. Big companies are also devoting more and more resources to apps, and as apps help companies grow, it fuels the need for more jobs in human resources, sales, marketing and other non-technical positions. There’s also anemerging app development services economy growing out of the app boom.

The app economy has been a major engine for job growth in an otherwise sluggish labor market, said Mandel. And it’s likely to keep growing as wireless and social platforms expand.

Mandel arrived at his estimates by looking at the number of unique “help wanted” ads for apps in the the Conference Board HWOL database. He then factored in the historical rate in the computer and mathematics industry for employment ads compared to existing jobs. And then he applied a multiplier to estimate the number of indirect jobs created by apps.

The highest number of app positions in a metro area were created in the New York-New Jersey-Long Island area (9.2 percent), followed by San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont (8.5 percent),  San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara (6.3 percent) and the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue (5.7 percent) area. Overall, California generated the most app jobs by far with 23.8 percent of all jobs, followed by New York (6.9 percent) and Washington (6.4 percent).

These are still early days and that’s why Mandel was forced to come up with his own estimates, because there is no good tracking done by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But I think we’re likely to see a lot more growth, especially as smartphone and tablet penetration increases.

As I wrote earlier, consumers are increasingly favoring apps over a browser in part because it’s a pretty streamlined experience that is dedicated to one purpose. Over time, we will likely see the growth in app jobs level off as more companies look to leverage the web and build more cross-platform HTML5 web apps. But for now, there’s still a lot of interest in native apps that are built atop popular platforms. And that means this is where to find a lot of new jobs.

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To prove that no one does luxury quite like Chanel, the French fashion powerhouse hosted an over-the-top weekend beginning January 20 at the Wynn Las Vegas for 200 celebrities, V.I.P. clients, and editors. Flown in from New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco on private planes, the guests were invited to the casino capital for the launch of an eight-day installation, “Numéros Privés,” a multifaceted sensory experience in itself.

Every element of the event—which was two years in the making—was custom designed and built under the direction of Chanel and executed on site by production company Prodject. Construction took a week, and the result was an immersive environment filled with subtle and overt references to the luxury brand.

According to a company spokesperson, the invitation-only “Numéros Privés”—or, hidden numbers—was created to “surprise and delight both new and existing clients” and serve as a celebration of Chanel in Las Vegas. “Las Vegas is an extremely significant market for Chanel,” said the spokesperson. “The city is such an important entry point for first-time clients who experience their first Chanel moment here.” The fashion house operates three boutiques in the city, including one at the Bellagio that recently reopened after an eight-month renovation.

In Vegas, a location known for its high stakes, Chanel’s extravagant gamble served as a way for it to reinforce its ties with the community and its burgeoning Asian clientele. The event, timed to open during the Chinese New Year festivities, also emphasized the importance numbers have both in Chinese culture and the history of Chanel. Decorating an array of elements, from the invitation to the floors of the exhibition dinner, Coco Chanel’s lucky numbers—5, 2.55, and 31—were more than conspicuous and fitting, really, given the tie-in with Vegas culture.

“The importance of numbers made this a perfect connection between the two,” the spokesperson said.

Comprised of 10 rooms, the exhibition was an experiential tour through the classic house codes. For instance, one space was filled with Chanel Bearbrick dolls and matching wallpaper, while another displayed jewelry among sculpted topiaries. There was also a recreation of Coco Chanel’s apartment at 31 Rue Cambon, and a carnival room had claw machines, where more than one guests attempted to grab little Chanel gift bags using the mechanical arms.

“It’s like you’re walking into different vibes of Chanel in every room,” said Lily Collins as she toured the space alongside other celebrities like Jessica Alba, Rachel Zoe, Alexa Chung, and Anouck Lepère. “You truly feel like you get an essence of the entire collection, of the entire vibe of the company, and the culture and history of it.”

Other whimsical touches throughout the weekend included chauffeured Escalades branded with the double-C logo and black-and-white goodie bags containing vouchers for a complimentary manicure and pedicure at the hotel space. (The salon’s usual nail polishes were replaced with those by Chanel for the weekend.)

Friday night’s dinner, which followed the exhibit opening, was Asian centric and included an assortment of dim sum—dumplings, pork and shrimp shumai, and pork pot stickers with soy chili dipping sauce—braised sliced prime short rib in Szechuan peppercorn sauce with garlic spinach, and crispy sea bass with sizzling scallions, cilantro, and soy sauce. For dessert, a quartet of confections was served: passion fruit and lemongrass gelee with green apple and pandan mousse as well as three combinations of popsicles, including red bean and chocolate, green tea and white chocolate, and passion fruit and white chocolate.

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Public relations is just one of those things. 

It’s something that every company knows they should do, but only see two ways of making it happen — hire an expensive PR firm or cross their fingers and hope for the best. The latter is, well, not really much of a PR strategy. There is a third option, however.

Bootstrapping.

I’ve written in the past about how to bootstrap your PR efforts, but never really dug into the nitty gritty. It’s a time intensive process, but if you’re up for the challenge, getting coverage in some of the top outlets in the world is possible, and even likely. I’ve tried many methods, failed many times, and ultimately boiled it down to this process.

Here it is, Moz family.

Step 1 – The Mirror Check

The first step is what I like to call the mirror check, something that gets glossed over far too often. You need to put yourself in the mind of a writer. People don’t want to read shit stories, and writers don’t want to write them; it’s a simple relationship. Before you dig into the rest of the process, make sure you’ve got a story that you’d be interested in reading. Honestly. If you can’t look yourself in the mirror and say that you would love to read what you’re pitching, hold off.

Save your time, and more importantly, everyone else’s.

Step 2 – Building Your Publication List

Once you’ve got a solid story, it’s time to start building your list of publications. I’ve found it helpful to break it into larger categories, such as tech blogs, mainstream media, local press, niché publications and so on. That’ll give you a good outline to begin digging into the specific publications you’re looking to reach out to.

It’s important to note that PR isn’t a numbers game, as many think. It’s a quality and relevance game, not a shotgun spray. To determine relevance, you really need to engulf yourself in the content of the publication — read at least 5 articles. Without reading the content, you aren’t able to truly understand the writing style and typical news they cover. Once you’ve done this, add only the publications that would be interested in your story, and omit those that wouldn’t. It’ll save you time when we get to the next step.

Step 3 – Finding the Right Contact

This is so important that it deserves its own step. Again, it’s all about relevance, even more so when you’re looking for the right person to pitch your story to. What’s the sweet spot for one writer, may be completely irrelevant to another. If you pitch the wrong one, well, you blew your shot. You’ve got to dig deep on this step. Here’s the info that my list usually contains:

The first three fields are fairly self explanatory, then we get into the meat of it. The “relevance point” refers to the overlap with the writer’s past work. A good way of finding the right person to pitch your story to, is to go to the publication and search for relevant content.

For example, if I’m looking pitch an article on company culture, the best way to find the right person is to search the publication for the term “Company Culture”. Crazy, I know. This will bring up a great list of past content that you can dig through to find the writer that normally covers the type of story you’re pitching.

Once you’ve got the right person, the real investigative work starts happening. Depending on the publication, when you click the author’s name, you’re usually taken to a page with their contact info, bio, social profiles and the like. If you’re not as lucky, you’ll have to resort to a good ol’ Google search (or Bing search to find what you’re looking for.

For each author, I like to make sure I’ve got at least their Twitter handle, Linkedin profile, Facebook profile and personal site (if they have one). What this allows you to do, is not only track down an email address in most cases, but it also allows you to gain a good understanding of their personality. Make note of things they like, what they’ve done recently, where they’re located — it’s all publicly available, and goes a long way in making you stand out. Like anyone else, writers appreciate when you take the time to do it right. Drop these hints of deep research in your pitch.

Finally, if you aren’t able to track down their email address, use tools like Rapportive to help in guessing the right contact address. If it clicks and data appears, you’ve got the right email address.

Step 4 – Crafting Your Pitch and Subject Line

A lot of people mess up on the pitch, the eventual email that gets sent off. They get wordy, dance around the purpose of the email, attach a press release and ultimately fail miserably. Like this kid. The pitch needs to show relevance, be compelling and maintain brevity.

To provide an example, here’s a pitch that I’ve used in the past:

Subject: Introducing Leatherbound, An eBook Search Engine Built in 48-Hours

Hope you’re well, *editor name.*

Wanted to pass this along for a potential post on *publication name,* as I thought it was a good fit after your post on climbing eBook sales.

The Pitch - We’ve been knee-deep in code for the past 48 hours during Rails Rumble, a worldwide developer competition. The result, a beautiful web app called Leatherbound that makes the search for eBooks simple, powerful, and efficient.

The Problem - The reading experience on Kindle, iBook and Nook apps are nearly identical, yet it’s extremely tedious to find the book you’re looking for, at the price you want for each platform. Sometimes the book is cheaper on Kindle, other times iBookstore doesn’t have what you’re looking for, but Nook does. That’s where Leatherbound comes into play.

The site is dead simple, as it should be. Enter any book title or author and Leatherbound pulls book results on the iBookstore, Kindle and Nook in a single click, along with price, availability, description, etc.

Here’s a good example of the site at work – not bad for 48 hours of work, if I do say so myself. ; ) 

Feel free to reach out if you need more info or want to chat, thought it’d be an awesome post for you guys.

Cheers,

There’s a few subtleties to highlight here. First, you’ve really got to take advantage of the subject line, craft it as if you were writing the article yourself — turn the mirror your way. Pull the core “hooks” from your pitch and blend them together for your subject. Make it count, it’s a make or break piece.

Next, you’ve got to keep it brief and call out the important parts. I usually like to clearly call out (in bold) the problem that the product is solving, the pitch, and aquick way to see what you’re pitching in action. With the number of emails that a writer gets each day, you’ve got a second or two to grab their attention, this tells them exactly where to look for the info they need.

Finally, I try and add a little personality to it that matches up well with the personality of the writer (as I learn from their social profiles) — no one wants to cover dull. Have fun with it, and allow them to find more info on you with your signature.

Step 5 – Let it Rip

Or, you could make it rain. Whichever you prefer.

This is the culmination of all the work you’ve put in. Obviously, you can’t always time your news in the case of product launches and breaking news, but I’ve found that Sunday evening is a great time to put it out there. Most folks are lazy, and they aren’t willing to put in the time on a Sunday, this leaves a nice window for your pitch and a Monday release date in most cases. It’s not a necessity, but it may give you the best odds.

Also, this sounds obvious, but make sure you’re ready for responses to your pitch. If the writer is interested, you’ll hear back and they’ll want more info. Respect their time and get back to them as soon as you can.

The rest is out of your hands.

Some General Don’ts

Before we wrap this up, I want to go over some general don’ts with PR. By no means is this list comprehensive, but it’ll steer you away from the big screw-ups.

• Avoid the Embargo - Generally speaking, writers don’t like embargoes. It’s a liability and a pain in the ass that many would like to avoid. Send your news out when it’s ready and available for consumption.
• Lose the Press Release  - In my mind, the press release is dead. They’re bloated, impersonal and a thing of the past. If you just want links on Yahoo! news, sure, go for it. It’s not going to give you the coverage that’s really valuable, though. At the very least, make sure not to attach a press release to your pitch. Do it for me, please.
• Don’t Double Pitch - Don’t send the same pitch to multiple people at the same publication. It shows that you’re just firing off as many emails as you can, and it’s a sure way to get you ignored.
• Skip the General Address - Most publications recommend that you send to a generic email address like news@publication.com, it’s the catch-all for poor pitches. People that don’t want to see success usually go this route, it’s the easy way to spray the shotgun, but it rarely yields results. Use it as your last option, but not the default.
• Put Down the Phone - This may be unconventional for most folks that do PR, but I believe that we live in a digital age, where phones are a secondary thing. Sure, if there’s interest, hop on a call by all means. But don’t do your pitching via a phone call. It catches folks off guard, and makes the encounter confrontational, with only a few seconds to tell them what they want to hear.
• Don’t Suck - Most importantly, don’t suck. Be a good person, not someone that’s just on the hunt for links. Provide the writer with value, help them do their job and be awesome. It’s amazing what good intent can do.

Conclusion

Executing on a PR push is time intensive, and demanding of finesse. It’s why PR firms demand upwards of $15,000/month, with no guarantee on output. I’m not a public relations pro. By no means is this the end all be all of PR processes, but it’s what I’ve found to be successful in landing press — earning coverage in Wired, The Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, Fast Company, Mashable and many more.  That said, what worked for me, may not work for all.

As with everything in tech, iterate, iterate, iterate.

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Apple is the king of the PC heap, as long as you consider the iPad among those devices. Research firm Canalys does, and its most recent look at client PC sales, focusing on the fourth calendar quarter of 2011, shows the PC market growing, but mostly as a result of strong iPad sales for the year.

With Apple’s more than 15 million iPads shipped during the quarter, the worldwide PC market grew 16 percent year over year. Not counting tablets, of which the iPad is easily the most successful, the PC market actually shrank by 0.4 percent worldwide when compared to the same period a year ago, according to the Canalys data.

Apple’s success both with the iPad and its Mac computers allowed it to take top honors for the quarter, knocking HP to second place overall. Canalys says the lack of a valid HP tablet competitor, now that the TouchPad is shelved, will mean that HP will continue to struggle against Apple’s success.

The iPad wasn’t the only tablet to do well during the quarter, however. Canalys says that the Amazon Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet also helped contribute to the success of tablets in the U.S. Amazon ranked as the second strongest tablet manufacturer worldwide, while Barnes & Noble took the fourth place spot.

All told, iPads accounted for 22 percent of all worldwide PC shipments in the fourth quarter of 2011, as measured by Canalys. It’ll be interesting to see what effect a new iPad launch in the coming months might have on the worldwide momentum of tablets, and the larger PC industry.

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About Us:

Forest Electric Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of EMCOR Group, Inc., is the largest electrical contracting company in New York City and one of the largest in the U.S. For over 50 years, Forest Electric has provided complete, expert electrical services throughout the New York and Metropolitan area.

SUMMARY
An Assistant Project Manager to support the company in meeting its objectives and goals by supporting assigned commercial construction projects at various locations in the area and assisting with appropriate actions to ensure projects are progressing and completed on time, within budget and with defined resources.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
Include the following. Other duties may be assigned.

Ø Collaborate with Project Managers to ensure a complete scope of work is defined.
Ø Development to become competent with reviewing drawings and specifications so as to assist with preparing project schedules, change orders, and BEC & fire alarm filings.
Ø Monitor project budgets and labor costs.
Ø Prepare, maintain and present computer generated spreadsheets, logs and reports.
Ø Maintain regular communication and collaboration with Project Managers.
Ø Prepare and manage communications internally and with general contractors or construction managers for assigned projects.
Ø Prepare documents for billing purposes and coordinate with accounting personnel.
Ø Assist with material buyouts and releases.
Ø Comply with all company operating policies, procedures, and safety programs as established.

SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITIES
None

QUALIFICATIONS
To perform this job successfully, the individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

PREFERRED EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE
Ø A degree in engineering, business administration and/or related field, or a combination of education and experience.

COMPUTER SKILLS
Ø Direct experience with Microsoft Office Word and Excel applications.
Ø Working knowledge of Primavera or Microsoft Project software desirable.

REQUIRED ATTRIBUTES
The requirements listed below are representative of characteristics and demonstrated capabilities sought to perform this job successfully.
Ø Must possess excellent written and verbal communications skills.
Ø Must demonstrate ability to effectively organize and manage multiple projects.
Ø Must demonstrate ability to analyze and solve problems.
Ø Must demonstrate commitment to company values.

LANGUAGE SKILLS
Must have the demonstrated ability to effectively communicate, cooperate, and collaborate with multiple levels of employees, government agencies, general and subcontractors, and suppliers.

PHYSICAL DEMANDS
The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to sit, see, talk, and hear. The employee is regularly required to use hands to finger, handle, or feel. The employee is regularly required to walk, reach with hands and arms. The employee may occasionally lift and/or move up to twenty-five (25) pounds.

While performing the duties of this job, the employee will be regularly required to commute to field locations.

WORK ENVIRONMENT
The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly exposed to video display terminals. The employee is regularly exposed to moving mechanical parts, fumes or airborne particles and outside weather conditions. The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate to loud.

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