http://www.monster.com/
Monster World Wide (MWW) new global advertising campaign is meant to appeal to job seekers, either the unemployed or currently employed, who both have a drive to get a new job. MWW is the parent company of the employment website monster.com, which the campaign is promoting prospective workers to visit. The campaign is being shown in the United States, Canada and Europe (25 countries), in multiple mediums including websites, print ads, radio and television commercials and billboards. The campaign is meant to attract people into finding the right job for them by focusing on their newly redesigned website that benefits seekers and employers. The campaign is based around the idea that there are millions of people across the globe that are either in the wrong job, have no job, or are unemployed. The advertisements portray ordinary people or toys in jobs that they are inept for. The ad asks ‘Need a new job?’ and as a viewer you are left questioning if I am really in the right job or is there something better out there for me (ex. video to above). That is when the redesigned site comes into play, offering millions of jobs to prospective ‘job seekers’ and millions of resumes for employers, with the website facilitating the communication between the two. The main target audience still remains the ‘job seekers’ who currently have a job, but are seeking a better alternative.
The choices of the campaign to be distributed through many different mediums is intended to reach as many people as possible, by combining the broad m
arket of the internet and television with radio, print (right image) and billboards. The campaign is more specifically meant for the middle class worker who feels that his/her jobs has resulted in a job that they are unfit for. The concept of the ads are very simple; An incompetent worker is shown working until something comical happens to the worker, something that would give question to if the worker is in the right profession, and then a question appears on the screen, ‘Are you in the right job?’. This question causes an assessment of current employment status. There simplicity of the five words and reaction that it gets is amazing. They built the perfect tagline that is short, differentiated, unique, easy to say and remember, has no negative connotations and most importantly evokes an emotional response. By using ‘Are you in the right job?’ as a tagline MMW creates a slogan that hits home with millions of people who are questioning their employment.Despite the great tagline that is being used there is possibilities that the wrong emotions can be stirred up, especially with the given economic climate. Unemployment is on the rise in America, a recession is in effect and then we have this campaign that is basically encouraging people to leave their jobs and go and find something new. So lets get this straight; people are lucky to have a job, advertisements encourage people to leave their secure job and go in search of something better, all of which is during a time when economies are crashing, unemployment is skyrocketing, mass layoffs are occurring everyday, and peoples retirements are in question. Sounds like a good idea? Not so much, but this campaign concept was probably designed prior to all of the turmoil that is taking place.
The authenticity of the campaign is somewhat in the air. On one hand you have a company that allows you access to millions of jobs and lets you post your resume for those employers to see. So that is all good on that front, but then you have this portrayal that the want you to believe that you can just up and leave your profession and find another one without a single hiccup in the road. Although they do not state that directly you are left to assume that there is a job on their site waiting for you, that it is yours for the taking, especially when they sometimes use phrases like, ‘your calling is calling’ or ‘there’s never been a better time to go to Monster.com.’
Monster main competitor in the online job marketplace is Careerbuilder.com, both of which offer the same services in roughly that same form. Just to see if I was missing out on jobs I searched for jobs on both sites and found that most jobs could be found on either site. A link here is for the career builder job listing and the link here is for the monster listing; both of which are the exact same job. So this goes to show that both of the sites offer the same exact service, both use humor to attract their audience and both have roughly the same job listings. So I guess it ends up being a matter of choice on what site you go with for your job searching.
The current campaign is very flexible for broad marketing. The use a very little amount of text (left image) allows the visual aspect of the campaign to be the main part, which lets them adapt the ads very easily for the larger global markets. Although I have never used monster.com to find a job (despite to prove my point above) I found their site easy to navigate and well-designed. You can probably ask anyone about monster.com and more often than not people will know what you are talking about. That is because they have built up the reputation of the place you go to find a job; they have given their company value. People will always be looking for new and better jobs and employers will always be looking for prospective employees. Even in economic hardships there is still people hiring and people looking. The internet is not going away anytime soon, unless pending doom, monster.com controls roughly half of the online market for job listings, people know who they are and they have trust that they will have jobs to offer. The company is has a unified voice, that they are the place to go to find a new career path, because there’s never been a better time to visit monster.com.
