The theme this week is sites that espouse an organisation’s brand values: we conducted some research a while ago, which taught us that prospects see a website as “an extension of the management that will be hiring them”. Yet how often do our clients allow the candidate pool to suffer a hideous experience online? Sometimes, the way you build a site, is just as important as what you say in it.

Oh, and in response to a request that came through, we’ve added a new section at the bottom of this mail – sites that we have delivered for our clients. Each week we will focus on a site or campaign that is new, innovative or engaging. Hopefully all three.

Enjoy

A

Microsoft View My World (http://www.viewmyworld.com/)
We’ll start with a classic recruitment site.: Microsoft employees living the brand values (if you want to see the supporting advertising, click here). The site is soft on the eye, easy to use and encourages the user to delve deeper. Asides from the poor interface between this and Microsoft’s corporate recruitment ATS and the weird subject matter (well, we can’t all be techies now, can we?), the site has been stitched together in a clever and cohesive way. Rather than forcing a user into the blogs section to see the blogs and into the profiles section to see the profiles, there are numerous ways of engaging with the content. My favourite example is the section called ‘why’.

Motorola Soul Police (http://motorolacity.soulpolice.com/)
The site is a product demo and quite and engaging one at that. It got me thinking about how often we are asked to showcase the experience of working within an organisation. Our (and the industry’s) response has been typically to use video content or static HTML. This just struck me as an effective, engaging and different way of doing it.

Espousing brand values (http://www.escriba.es/)
I heard someone in MDH talking about Barcelona, so I had a quick search and ‘ hey presto’, one of the most unique retail sites I think I have seen. Engaging, weird and really well executed. The thought, quality and care that has gone into this site, tells me as much about the quality of Escriba products than actually eating them. If anyone gets a chance to visit, I’d love to know what it is actually like.

Branding: can you feel the lurve? (http://www.moluv.com/)
One for our creatives and techies. A smorgasbord of useful stuff: logos, fonts, scripts, examples of great websites.

Hodes Site of the Week : BBC Production Trainee Scheme (http://www.bbc.co.uk/jobs/pts/)
The Production Trainee Scheme is an 18-month scheme to develop the programme makers and commissioners of the future, providing 19 ‘exceptional’ people with the opportunity to be trained ‘on the job’ at the BBC. To attract such people, the site needed to be engaging and alluring, so we opted for an engaging up front flash interface (also known as a Splash landing page). The creative approach tied in with some of the banners we developed, which sat across 12 different sites. For those of you who attended the Town Hall in Hertford, you will have shared my excitement at the launch of the Flash creative on Fish4. For those who weren’t, you will have shared the other Andy (r)’s excitement via email!

Initial stats show that the site is performing well with 2,942 people starting the application process and a further 266 having already completed it. Some great interaction between all departments, and some great client feedback.

My only negative point of note was the lack creative continuity between the Splash page and the microsite. But then Rome wasn’t built in a day…