Hawaii Five O deserves an award for some of the most narrative-integrated, yet hit-you-over-the-head obvious, product placement advertising on TV this side of infomercials. Here are five things I’ve learned that can be applied to recruitment marketing since the series began:

1. Make your core brand identity clear and highlight it often.

Five O is an action-driven police procedural, and the  regular car chases, as well as the show’s trademark McGarrett/Danno car-guements provide ample opportunity to highlight the show’s sponsorship dollars from GM. Everyone (good guys at least) drives a Chevy. It doesn’t matter how brutal the car chase or how rugged and dirty the terrain, the show’s ubiquitous 2010 Chevrolet Camaro 2LT Coupe (and co-starring Traverse and Cruze) are spotless, waxed and buffed and ready for their close-up. It’s like an extended weekly version of the BMW ‘driver’ mini-films that brought Clive Owen his first real exposure in the US. Only with Chevys. And without the A-list movie stars and directors. Otherwise – just like it.

Can you spot the real star of this scene?

The Chevy ‘bowtie’ emblem probably gets as much screen time as the lead actors on the show – similarly you should make sure your brand identity is in front of your prospect audience frequently so that your name is synonymous with career opportunities – just like Chevy Camaro is synonymous with Five O-style pulse pounding, adrenaline rush action.

2. Show employees engaging with each other to show your culture.

A few episodes into season one some Five O members revealed that they are a tech-savvy group and firmly in the Microsoft camp. In episode 8, Daniel Dae Kim tells co-star Grace Park to look up a piece of art on her smartphone – a totally believable ‘real life’ activity – unfortunately ruined by some off-tone, branding. Dae Kim doesn’t just tell Park to look something up, he tells her: “You don’t believe me? Bing it!”

Microsoft must have been hoping that they could somehow use pop culture to raise ‘Bing’ to the status of ‘Google’ as a synonym for looking something up on the internet. Google didn’t try to make that happen – it just happened and you can’t force it. That Grace Park then uses a Windows 7 phone to ‘Bing It’ didn’t help – it was like salt in the wound.

Prospects want to know what they can expect as an employee – an environment where everyone take mobile technology for granted (like the Five O crew), or are you a suit and tie environment or t-shirt and flip-flops? Does your culture run on after-hours, Starbucks fueled, team collaborations or relaxed morning meetings? How do your employees interact? Most of all, are you authentic or do you come across as stilted and awkward as asking someone to ‘Bing it’?

3. Teach your prospects something new / give them something of value.

As the last example shows, the bad ass, tech oriented, name-dropping members of the Five O prefer Microsoft technology (and web platforms). But the Microsoft product placement didn’t end with attempts to create a new catch phrase – they want to introduce you to technology and teach you how to use it. First, the introduction: The Windows 7 phone was everywhere in the show. Cast members were regularly using their Windows phones with incredibly distinct close-ups showing the smart phone in use – like a video training manual. You couldn’t escape the Windows phone during commercial breaks, either. Just in case you didn’t notice it in the show, a Windows phone ad was placed in just about every commercial block.

The ultimate Windows product placement moment however came from another Daniel Dae Kim/Grace Park moment (it appears that auto product placement is primarily handled by  Alex O’Loughlin (McGarrett) and Scott Caan (Danno) while tech product placements go to Dae Kim and Park).Once you begin to get the idea that Microsoft has a smartphone for sale, the Five O techies kick it up a notch: Daniel Dae Kim actually takes time from a crime investigation to teach Grace Park how to check her email on her Windows phone. You get step by step instructions along with close-ups on the phone’s screen showing you just how quick and easy it is to check your email on the Windows 7 phone. I get it – skillful product placement involves integrating the product into the show. Thanks Five O crime-fighters, I’m headed to the store right now that my fear of complicated technology has been resolved! (If anyone knows where I can find this video clip so I can add it to this post, please let me know)

Just Sit Back and Watch As Hollywood Stars Teach You How to Use Your Smartphone!

While it’s easy to make fun of the ham-handed email lesson, the Hawaii Five O marketers are onto something: you want to educate your audience. Microsoft wanted to demonstrate easy-to-use technology. You might want to use case studies, white papers, blog posts or short videos to show your accomplishments or highlight tools or resources that they would find useful.

4. Show your work environment.

Hawaii Five O’s product placement even goes beyond traditional ‘products’ – the producers recognize that location is a huge part of the shows’ appeal. Their local-friendly filming schedule clearly incorporates real local destinations and businesses as part of their tropical travel guide vibe – including an appearance by chef Masaharu Morimoto and his destination restaurant in Waikiki. The inclusion of real-life locations and personalities does more than localize the product placement vibe on Hawaii Five O – it roots the show in the real world. As this video clip shows, there is even be the opportunity to show another side of Morimoto Waikiki: we get to see the restaurant’s location, the kitchen and dining room, prep cooks and chefs at work, the fresh seafood, and even Chef Morimoto performing karaoke. All we need for a full-fledged recruitment video is pull one or two waiters aside and ask them about their benefits and what they like most about working for Morimoto Waikiki.

Chef Morimoto and the kitchen crew dealing with a tricky workman's comp situation.

5. Don’t go overboard.

Recently the show featured a product placement scene so over the top that The New York Times described the sequence as “jarring, disruptive and insulting.”  The action stops completely for this 50-second long in-show commercial, in which the show’s overweight shrimp food truck owner (played by amateur  sumo wrestler Taylor Wily) waxes poetic about losing weight by eating Subway sandwiches amid an array of prominent logos: “The best thing about it,  they make it anyway you want it…It’s some serious culinary fusion.” This doesn’t even qualify as humorous – it’s just cringe-inducing dialogue designed to promote Subway. Even the actors look embarrassed to be taking part in the scene. The take-away: promote your brand authentically and don’t force the message where it doesn’t belong.

 (All images and video are (C) CBS Broadcasting Inc. All RightsReserved. and used for editorial purposes only)

In a message that resonates with his book ‘Lynchpin’ – Godin recented stated in an interview:

• If you’re the average person out there doing average work, there’s going to be someone else out there doing the exact same thing as you, but cheaper. Now that the industrial economy is over, you should forget about doing things just because it’s assigned to you, or “never mind the race to the top, you’ll be racing to the bottom.”

This philosophy resonates in spirit with my Demotivator coffee mug from Despair, Inc.

Average is for robots – aim higher.

‘…not real friends just Facebook friends’. Is FB devaluing the term Friend? Should they have called them something else?

This got me thinking…for a few years there has been a lot of talk about Dunbar’s Number. Dunbar’s Number refers to a theory that there is a limit to the amount of relationships we can maintain. Beyond that number, you simply cannot maintain a meaningful relationship. Dunbar sets that number at a maximum of 150 people

In October of 2009, Seth Godin proclaimed that: Dunbar’s Number isn’t just a number, it’s the law. He makes a good argument that once you reach beyond your Dunbar number your message effectiveness changes as a side-effect of the intimacy of your relationship changing.

Supporting this, Switched.com explored How Many Facebook Friends Do We Have, For Real? I urge you to look at the eye-opening research they performed to explore ‘friend’ engagement.

But not everyone agrees with the relevance of Dunbar’s number to social media. Contrary to Seth Godin’s take that you must have ‘strong ties’ to your audience to be effective, Morten Hansen puts forward in his book Collaboration that the real value of collaboration and networks comes from weak relationships rather than from strong relationships and networks.  One of Morten’s network rules is “build weak ties, not strong ones.”

According to Morten: “…research shows that weak ties can prove much more helpful in networking, because they form bridges to worlds we do not walk within.  Strong ties, on the other hand, tend to be worlds we already know; a good friends often knows many of the same people and things we know.  They are not the best when it comes to searching for new jobs, ideas, experts, and knowledge.  Weak ties re also good because they take less time.  It’s less time consuming to talk to someone once a month (weak tie) than twice a week (a strong tie).  People can keep up quite a few weak ties without them being a burden.”

At first blush I would agree. Especially when we are looking at making a social media brand relationship. I do not have a ‘strong tie’ to any of the brands I engage with on Facebook or Twitter, we do not have regular lengthy conversations nor have I found myself buying a round of drinks for either author Christopher Moore, or Hyatt Hotels and Resorts Careers. But, I have found that I can engage with them on a semi-regular basis very easily.

I get information from each which I would otherwise have no way of knowing and, if I so desire, I can have a micro-engagement with little effort. From a brand perspective, whether engaging me as a would-be book reader/buyer or a possible job applicant, that level of engagement is enough — they open me up for deeper engagement according to my needs in response to the value I am exposed to by my ‘weak connection’. The same ‘weak tie’ value can be seen by anyone who is ann of a consumer brand and yet takes advantage of an online coupon or special promoted through a social media channel.

So what do we call these ‘weak connections’ in our networks, specifically Facebook? My proposed answer: they are a Facequaintance.

Someone who you have ‘friended’ on Facebook but don’t really know or keep in touch with. You generally don’t know anyone who ever comments on their Wall and wouldn’t know them even if they walked right up to you and slapped you.

Usage: “Yea, I’m friends with her but we’ve only met, like, once. She’s just a Facequaintance.”

Starbucks has just started using Foursquare as part of a new customer rewards program. To take part in this program, all you have to do is use foursquare to ‘checkin’ at your Starbucks location (I use the Foursquare app on my Droid).

While Starbucks has no official prizes associated with Foursquare activity (such as free coffee), after five checkins customers unlock the new “Barista badge.” The first specifically business branded badge on Foursquare, although almost certainly not the last.

Obviously this is just the tip of the iceberg for an organization that has already leveraged multiple presences on both Facebook and Twitter. If nothing else, Starbucks is hyper-activate about finding ways to leverage the groundswell and social media.

While both Twitter and Foursquare are looking to offer more business analytics tools (Foursquare plans to introduce free statistics and engagement tools for businesses) Starbucks is apparantly hoping to use Foursquare to provide more meaningful prizes. Some possibilities incluse invitations to special events, photo sharing or online reputation scores.

Already I’ve begun to hear people discussing ways to possibly use Foursquare in recruitment. Is it possible? Is it advised? How would it work? Would candidates get to unlock some special ’2nd Interview!’ Badge? Or are mobile-based geo-location tools simply not relevant?

 The multimillion-pound TV ad campaign will look familiar to anyone who’s seen a few of the Bing ads shown in the US.

 It’s been nine months since Bing’s launch and according to comScore’s measurements the search engine IS gaining market share. However that is mostly at the expense of Yahoo not Google. This is good for Bing since it’s growing (albeit usually in percentage points that look like 0.2% gain), but bad since it’s not really hurting Google in any meaningful way.

 With all the recent press around Google and privacy policies and issues, there may be some room for Bing to make further gains if they play their cards right. Maybe they should replace ‘search overload’ with a more direct “It’s 10PM does your search engine know what you’re doing?” campaign.

 Anyways, here’s one of the new commercials rolling out in the UK this week — they get points for the most creative use of “Euston station” — oh, who am I kidding, the ONLY creative use of “Euston station.”

 Your thoughts on the Bing/Google search battle and the now international search overload campaign are appreciated.

So the Saveur Foodie Profile quiz caught my eye (use the link provided, it can be hard to find sometimes on the site) and here are the results. While it’s not dead on in the details, I’d say the spirit is pretty accurate: I’d sooner save up for some amazing food experiences than a new car, I like authentic cuisine that is unique to the locale I happen to be visiting, etc.

Your Profile: Deluxe & Delicious

  You regularly book dinner reservations 6 months in advance. You have never eaten a combo meal. Your kitchen contains more gear than the average high school chem lab. Your eGullet alias is TheRealTopChef. You are fond of quoting Escoffier and Brillat Savarin. You mail order crawfish in January and Copper River salmon in May. You spend more on food than you do on either clothing or shelter.
9.74% of people who took the quiz are this profile

Try the Saveur Foodie Profile quiz  and share what kind of foodie you are in my comments!

You see, for months I’ve been having the same ad inflicted upon me. If you fly frequently and have flipped through any of these airline magazines I am sure you will be familiar with it. The company (Cenegenics) claims to be able to reverse “the signs and symptoms of aging.” As Paul Newman says in The Hudsucker Proxy ‘Yeah, yeah. Sure, sure.” Maybe it’s true but their ads just creep me out.

First there were a few variations on the ad below:

Look, I hope all the claims about this wonder-whatever are true. And maybe this guy is cut from the same cloth as Jack Lalanne, fully ready to kick sand in my face and twist my head off as easily as a bottle cap. I mean, look at that muscle tone! Look at that definition! Look at that cut-and-pasted on head! oh, wait, um….yea. Really?!?

OK, so maybe my reaction is a little knee-jerk skeptical. Maybe I’m just assuming the worst. So for months I let it slide until I saw the follow up ad below featuring another happy (what a coincidence!) physician. BTW…I have to wonder if a little research would show that these examples of Cenegenic’s amazing results are also tied to the company in any business sense. OK…so here’s the next ad:

OK, so at least in the first ad, IF they altered it, they did an OK cut and paste job. I don’t know quite WHAT I’m supposed to think of Dr. Jacob’s ‘After Cenegenics’ image. I mean…is it even real? Maybe something gets lost in bringing this picture off the page and onto the web, but the after image looks like it’s totally CGI…something made in Poser or some other 3-D modelling tool to create Dr. “Pump You Up” And is he really a doctor? He looks like he should be moonlighting as a South Beach gigolo in some bizarre ‘C movie’ by Dreamworks for the Lifetime Channel feature film.

What do you think? Am I too jaded and cynical or does this look like good visual proof that Cenegenics has the uber-cure for aging in their hands?