Jobs of the future are hard to predict.

What will we all be doing in 5 years? Who can tell.

I studied to be a journalist. No, I studied to be a print journalist. And now I work in and around mobile social networking strategy and development.

Let’s just quickly repeat that: Mobile social networking strategy and development. I am almost 100% certain that when I started studying at Rhodes University in 2003 that my current job didn’t even exist.

There is one job in particular that is going to need a lot more focus in the coming years:

New media sales and advertising.

The reason that I think this job is becoming increasingly important and increasingly neglected is because there is a marked lack of skilled and experienced people to fill this position.

What does this position entail?

Sales and advertising has traditionally (back in the old days) been about selling and advertising products. Getting people to buy in to your product or getting advertisers to place an advert in to your publication, on to your store walls or on your car and so on.

Sales and advertising is becoming a much more complicated and intricate art. You cannot just sell banners, text links, full page adverts, splash screens, in-video sponsorships or product placements. Social networks and new media businesses need to have a salesperson who understands every aspect of the business. This person needs to be able to cross sell, integrate campaigns, work on new media, old media and media that might not exist yet.

What does this person need to succeed?

This person needs to understand CPC, CPA, CPM, CPSA and how to make these models work. This person needs to not only know what CRM stands for but what it actually is and how to make it relevant to the client.

This person needs to know who the client is or should be and how that clients business or latest campaign fits in to the business of a new media business.

Sales is shifting as fast as media is shifting and technology is growing and developing. The trick here is that technology, websites, mobile content and advancements can push forward as fast as they like but if there is no team able to monetize the products, there may as well not even be a product.

It’s time start thinking about integrated salespeople, sales teams, sales in relation to your core business and if sales actually might be your companies core business.

The tribe is strong with this one.

Last week (26 March 2009) saw the launch of the Vida e Caffé Twitter Account (follow them). I immediately followed them, then realised they were giving away free coffee to the first 60 direct messages. So I sent off a message and managed to get myself some coffee to collect soon at my nearest Vida, which happens to be Rosebank, Johannesburg.

The very next day I decided to have a morning meeting at Vida e Caffé in Rosebank with my coffee and my mac. I paid for my coffee. I don’t even care if I ever get my free coffee, it’s the idea that matters, the offer that counts and the ownership I feel towards the brand that makes me loyal to the Vida brand.

Hell, to be perfectly honest, I’m not even sure if I think there coffee is the best of the best, but I really don’t care.

Let me tell you why I don’t care.

I don’t care if Vida has the best coffee because I like the service I receive when I order my coffee. I get smiles, jokes and laughs.

I don’t care if Vida has the best coffee because I like the way they operate their business.

I like the placement of their shops. I like the vibe of the brand, the funkiness and the way they embrace the culture of South Africa in spite of the brand being more Portuguese.

I like that their menu is simple and their food is good, however expensive it might be.

Vida e Caffé has positioned itself as one of those brands that people would rather pay an extra R5-R10 for per coffee just to say it’s a Vida coffee. Simple. People feel like they are getting more when they are paying more.

The Vida e Caffé brand owns me and let me be clear here, I feel an acute ownership of the brand when I choose to have meetings there, drink the coffee or eat the food.

Below is an email that I received on Monday in my capacity as SA Rocks Editor/Owner. Read it first and then I’ll go in to my reasons for liking the way it is structured (albeit coincidentally).

Hi Editor,

You won’t know me – I’m a big reader of 2Oceansvibe and was referred by a link there.

Anyway, I’m going to take a flyer here – just drop a little bait and hope for a bite…

I’m a music producer at the moment, studied at UCT and now living in Johannesburg trying to hit the big time. My record label has recently signed our first artist, a guy by the name of Timothy Moloi and are busy in studio recording his debut album. In the mean time, though, we decided to record a couple of live videos of him doing some covers of cool and interesting songs. Basically it’s just a way for us to get word out, create as much of a buzz as we can. We’ve had an incredible response to them so far and I thought I would share the videos with you:

www.youtube.com/user/TimothyMoloi

Now, I’m sure that you must have MANY people pawning their wares to you, but as a blogger (and in particuler, a South African one), you undoubtedly act as one of the tastemakers of our generation and I figured it would be worth a shot to see if you would like any of the videos. My favorite is the One Republic cover (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4fiPe4U_Ow&feature=channel_page), but feel free to have a browse around and prove me wrong! All the artists on the videos are South African – hope you’re impressed!

I’m not too sure what to say from here, man. I won’t beat around the bush – obviously it would be in my best interest for you to actually cover us on your blog and for that I would be incredibly grateful, but if not, a simple personal reply would be fantastic – another viewpoint to see what we’re doing right!

Look forward to hearing from you!

Let me break down the above email in to sections/reasons why I was taken by it and responded immediately.

References

The email references 2oceansvibe, I know I have a link in Seth’s sidebar and therefore know (or feel) a little bit of legitimacy from the email’s author.

Hope and a wish

The author openly admits that he is taking a chance. He isn’t being too presumptuous and assuming that I will obviously respond and act. There are no orders coming from the email, there are hopes and requests.

Know the blog

James (the author of the email) clearly went and read SA Rocks. He knew that I liked local music, liked to help promote local artists and liked to support an underdog. So he appealed to these attributes with: “My record label has recently signed our first artist, a guy by the name of Timothy Moloi and are busy in studio recording his debut album.”

Play on my field

Multimedia and new media content are integral to my world, it’s how I make my living and how I interact with people. So it’s a good thing James didn’t tell me that he hated the internet and would never release any of Timothy’s music online for the world to swipe. In fact, he did the opposite. He sent me links to a YouTube video of Timothy vocalising the hell out of a song I knew “Apologize” by One Republic. He had dropped the bait in my lake and I was not only staring at it, listening to it but chewing on it as hard as I could.

Play to my Ego

The crème de la crème, my ego. James played the game perfectly by stating the following: “Now, I’m sure that you must have MANY people pawning their wares to you, but as a blogger (and in particuler, a South African one), you undoubtedly act as one of the tastemakers of our generation and I figured it would be worth a shot to see if you would like any of the videos.”

How could any self-indulgent blogger possibly say no to a line like that? James got my, hook, link and sinker.

End the pitch

Do not linger, do not be verbose, do not become pedestrian and cliched. Write what you want to write, get it out, close it down and end the email. Do not linger. I hate it when I have to sift through ten paragraphs of shit to get to the point of the pitch. Say what you want and leave me alone.

And here I sit blogging about James and Timothy and will be meeting with them very soon to see how I can help them in any capacity I can think of.

James, well played. And to anyone who is trying to pitch to bloggers that might be reading this, take note: A good pitch will be responded to immediately and will have the bloggers commitment from the word Go.

With this simple video, funny as hell, The Onion (unless they’ve planned this whole thing) have taken it to Sony, hard.

This really does illustrate the independence of an online brand. Sharply contrasting how beholden old-media is to their advertisers. I love this sort of campaign, I love the brashness of it and I love that they had the balls to put it out there.

Honesty in business, sales, marketing and advertising is by no means a fresh new concept. Yet it is fast becoming an integral one in the world that we inhabit.

There are many posts that discuss transparency online in a personal sense. Don’t lie, cheat, steal, defraud or do anything that might dent your reputation online. But I am referring more to the concept of honesty when selling online to the less knowledgeable.

This has become an absolutely imperative part of selling and talking about online with people. Many companies and agencies are interested and intrigued by online at the moment because it is the direction in which the world is moving. But there are dangers.

The main danger that I have come across is the overselling of the potential of online right now. Many companies almost have their finger on the pulse of things. But this means that they know of Facebook, Youtube and other sites that they can use in a social arena to promote their products. Yet many of them think that the viral nature of the social web world wide applies directly to South Africa. It doesn’t. Viral in SA probably means, if you’re lucky, a few thousand views of a video and a couple of blog posts. In the Western world viral translates to a few million views of a video and a few hundred thousand links to or embeds of a video. Those are the cold hard facts and expectations should be readjusted accordingly.

Unfortunately the “people in the know” often oversell the potential of social media in South Africa to get the hype up and the profit margins higher. This is bad. This sort of selling is doing detrimental damage to the truth and success of the market in SA. This sort of selling makes it very difficult to create a consistent and successful stream of clients, revenue and business in the online industry. People are being burned and are staying away from spending money online because of misleading sales and delivery pitches. Return of investment (ROI) is being oversold and underdeliverd. Again, this is bad.

Honesty is key. Clients need to know the truth and still want to go forward with a campaign and experiment, play in the space and engage with one or two hundred people in stead of hoping to gain one or two million. It wont happen so don’t sell it that way.