Will Candidates Answer Monster’s Call(ing)?

Sat, Jan 5, 2008

Joel recently showcased the new ad concepts being rolled out by Monster.com. As an ad guy myself, I took great interest in seeing how they would be rebranding themselves.

I know this may be the first positive thing said about Monster on Joel’s blog but I have to say at first glance, the new ads seem to be pretty good. They hit their target market with key insights about the dissatisfaction of unfulfilling work in a creative and thought provoking manner. Visually, they have a strong build up with a solid payoff at the end.

The ads were developed by their new ad shop, BBDO. Eric Silver, Executive Creative Director on the account had this to say about the new campaign…”The team tried to create a campaign that felt big, smart and stayed out of all the cliché land mines that are easy to stumble on in this category.”

Time will tell whether this new image, backed by approximately $150 million in domenstic ad spend, will drive more candidate flow and ultimately turn around Monster’s lackluster stock performance but at first peek, I believe the ads will create some positive buzz for Monster.

Buzz or not, the proof is always in the pudding. The candidate experience on the site has to deliver otherwise they just wasted a bunch of money driving people to a site that doesn’t perform.

For my money though, they may never be able to top their initial “When I grow up…” campaign (or for you advertising folks out there, this spoof on working in the ad business.).

This post was written by:

Matt Adam - who has written 3 posts on Cheezhead.

Matthew Adam serves as Vice President & Talent Strategist for NAS Recruitment Communications, an agency of the McCann Worldgroup and a leading provider of innovative human resource communications solutions with offices in 37 major markets in the United States and Canada. His role is national in scope and designed to facilitate major account implementation and support strategic project consultation. Having spent the last 14 years as a recruitment strategy consultant for a diverse client roster, including both Fortune 500 and small start-ups, Matthew has worked with a wide-variety of Clients to develop effective on-line strategies that define and shape an organization’s recruiting efforts in the Interactive marketplace of today. He is an internationally featured speaker at various SHRM, CUPA and EMA events.

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