Hotjobs.com yesterday kicked off a $50 million-plus, yearlong marketing campaign that will look to be the antithesis of the Monster.com effort that featured sarcastic witticisms from children, such as “I want to be forced into early retirement.”
HotJobs' massive Onward, Upward campaign will instead put a positive spin on careers with television, print, radio, outdoor and online ads featuring encouraging and inspirational messages.
“We're trying to take it to the next level in terms of emotional resonance with consumers to differentiate ourselves from our competitors,” said Marc Karasu, director of advertising at HotJobs, New York. “We want to become synonymous with the idea of optimism. We're supporting people's quest to improve their careers. I wouldn't be surprised if other people in the category move in that direction.”
The campaign will target adults ages 21 to 54. The sweet spot of the demographic skews younger, said Karasu, since the “younger end of the spectrum, growing up with the Internet” is more likely to incorporate it into their everyday lives, including their job searches.
Consumers can expect to see the new commercials broadcast during prime time as early as the middle of this month. The network spots will be supported with select cable and local buys.
At the end of the fourth quarter and throughout next year, radio ads, as well as revamped print and outdoor ads, will be unveiled.
“Television will put a stake in the ground in a big way and we'll reinforce it with radio and print,” Karasu said.
The site will purchase radio spots in most of the major metropolitan cities such as Boston, Miami, New York and San Francisco. A number of billboards with the new ad copy will also appear in select cities. “The greater the concentration of people, the more propensity [there is] to embrace the Internet philosophy,” said Karasu. Not to mention, “it's easier to speak in concentrated areas.”
Print advertising for the site appears in publications such as Maxim and Men's Health. The site plans to increase its print campaigns across mass market and niche publications.
Online marketing will play a large part in this latest effort. Working closely with HookMedia, Boston, a digital media management and data analysis firm, the site will run more than 100 million impressions in the fourth quarter alone. Each month it will refresh the creative to battle against banner burnout.
The buy will stretch across vertical sites, high-traffic sites and ad networks that are an amalgamation of hundreds of sites.
In the third quarter, the company ran 100 million impressions. Based on the results from that campaign, it will select the best performing sites where “we will be feeding them and starving the others,” said Marc Cenedella, vice president of business development at HotJobs.
Some of the Web properties it plans to “feed” include Discovery.com, Yahoo and the DoubleClick network.
The site also will launch its first e-mail newsletter in the fourth quarter. Consumers will be asked to opt-in to receive resume writing tips and marketplace news. It currently has a “job agent” e-mail notification system where consumers can sign up to receive updates on jobs available in their desired fields.
In addition to providing positive messaging, the campaign also will work to make the first “o” in “HotJobs,” which features starbursts around it, as recognizable as the Nike swoosh. “We'll hopefully build something iconic for us,” Karasu said.
