Monster

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Monster

5 Clock Tower Place
Maynard, Massachusetts 01754
USA
Telephone: (978) 461-8000
Fax: (978) 461-8100
Web site: www.monster.com

TODAY'S THE DAY CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW

Monster, formerly known as Monster.com, persevered through the tech industry downturn of early 2001 by maintaining its position as the most used job website in the world. In 2004, besides being the top online recruitment company for Germany and India, Monster held half of America's online job-recruitment market and 10 percent of America's combined online and print market. Monster offered ads for employers that were cheaper and more visible than newspaper ads. For job seekers Monster offered a free résumé-building service and job-opening alert tools, and it allowed employees to post their résumés for free. This bundle of features, along with Monster's marketing strategy, helped the company's database of résumés rise from 26 million in 2003 to 34 million by 2005. In that year Monster.com boasted 800,000 unique monthly visitors.

Often criticized for overspending on marketing expenditures, Monster's founder and CEO, Andrew J. McKelvey, spent $125 million on worldwide advertising in 2004, launching campaigns across television, radio, print, and the Internet. One $50 million campaign, "Today's the Day," originated with New-York based ad agency Deutsch, which handled Monster's creative efforts until 2005. The first 30-second spot in the "Today's the Day" campaign aired on December 26, 2003, during the College Bowl Championship Series. Two others spots were aired on February 1, 2004, during Super Bowl XXXVIII. The three spots ran in rotation on network television and national cable until the campaign ended on April 12, 2004. Targeting a wide range of skilled, salaried, and hourly job seekers as well as both national and local employers, the first spot began with a voice-over asking, "Will today be the day …?" It then showed ordinary people, including a man and woman lying in bed, a woman showering, a young woman applying makeup while riding the bus, and a man adjusting his tie. Unlike Monster's 1999 "When I Grow Up" campaign, which had facetiously depicted children yearning for the banal qualities of corporate America, "Today's the Day" was meant to inspire employees to further their careers and their lives.

"Over the past ten years, Monster has become one of the most recognizable global brands," Jeff Taylor, Monster.com's global director, told Adweek. "Our 2004 plan, defined by continuous advertising, a multi-faceted online marketing strategy and ongoing sponsorships, is designed to further maximize our brand recognition as the online recruitment leader." Ten months after the first spot aired Monster reported $618.1 million in revenue, far surpassing the $499.2 million earned in the same period during 2003. The campaign helped Monster to continue its domination of the online job-recruitment market over competitors such as CareerBuilder and HotJobs.com, the latter a unit of Yahoo! Inc.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Monster Worldwide, Inc., the parent company of Monster, was founded by McKelvey in 1967 as TMP Worldwide. It grew to be one of the world's largest recruitment agency networks. Monster.com, which was launched in 1994, achieved industry renown in 1999 by being the first dot-com to air ads during the Super Bowl. Created by the Mullen agency in Wenham, Massachusetts, the campaign "When I Grow Up" included three 30-second spots that aired during Super Bowl XXXIII. Costing $4 million, the ads featured children saying such things as "When I grow up, I want to file all day" or "I want to climb my way up to middle management." By late 2003 Monster had awarded advertising responsibilities to Deutsch, an agency based in New York. Bryan Black, senior vice president of Deutsch, told Shoot, "Monster felt like they had grown up a bit, and they wanted the voice to be a little bit more mature and also a bit more appropriate for the day and age we live in right now." In 2003 Monster.com was renamed Monster.

Using the inexpensive advertising capabilities and worldwide visibility of the Internet, Monster tried overtaking newspapers' market share of help-wanted advertising. The concept fanned excitement during the 1990s tech boom and helped Monster Worldwide's stock peak at $10 billion. The company, and McKelvey especially, were criticized, however, for spending too much on advertising and not enough on the development of technology. Nonetheless, Monster saw its shares skyrocket from $10 in 1998 to $85 in 2000. Monster also increased its partnerships by sponsoring the 2004 U.S. Olympic team and joining with WeightWatchers.com after 19 percent of Monster's users listed "losing weight" as their top resolution for 2004. By 2005 Monster had shifted the creative responsibilities for its advertising from Deutsch to Boston-based agency Brand Content.

TARGET MARKET

In December 2003 Taylor told Adweek, "The 'Today's the Day' campaign is alive, encouraging and hopeful. As we embark on the new year, it is these inspirational qualities that empower job seekers everywhere to take control of their careers and realize their dreams and aspirations." The campaign's broad target, according to Scott Lahde of Deutsch, consisted of "salaried, hourly and skilled, national and local job seekers and employers." The campaign also targeted the growing population of young workers who were more inclined to use a computer than a newspaper when looking for help-wanted ads. "Monster's Website reportedly has become obligatory viewing among college-grad job seekers, and others hip to the online job-hunting scene," wrote Andrew Bary in Barron's. Television spots featured mostly white-collar urbanites wearing business attire and looking hopeful about finding new jobs.

Monster wanted the "Today's the Day" campaign to be different from the deadpan nature of its 1999 "When I Grow Up" ads and to inspire viewers to achieve greater things. " 'Today's the Day' is the perfect encouragement to get people to do something to change their lives right now. Right this second," Kathy Delaney, managing partner and executive creative director at Deutsch, told Business Wire. During the campaign Monster increased its sales staff and marketing expenditures to attract blue-collar workers and small-business employers. The initial effort hurt Monster's margins, but McKelvey believed that it would pay off for the company in years to come.

In the first month of the "Today's the Day" campaign Monster released findings that 93 percent of Americans would look for a new job during 2004. By the end of 2004 Monster's self-assessment index, called the Monster Employment Index, showed that the demand for employees had risen from 134 points in July to 151 points by September. According to the index, the health-care industry reflected the largest growth throughout 2004.

COMPETITION

Monster's closest competitor was CareerBuilder, founded in 1995 and based in Chicago. It sold advertisements to employers at $100 below Monster's baseline price. In 2003 visitors to the CareerBuilder website could peruse more than 600,000 jobs and 10 million résumés. That same year CareerBuilder's sales reached $31 million. Although this was only a small fraction of Monster's $424 million, CareerBuilder posted greater sales growth during 2003, 17 percent as opposed to only 1.9 percent for Monster. Cramer-Krasselt, an agency headquartered in Chicago, launched a national ad campaign for the company in 2003, coinciding with Monster's "Today's the Day" campaign. It was reported that CareerBuilder spent $20 million on the ads, which included television spots featuring employees trying to escape the monotony of their jobs. In one commercial, for example, a bank teller pretended to rob a bank and then meekly tiptoed away. Another 30-second spot featured a blue-collar worker escaping from his factory by crawling inside an enormous teddy bear. The ads were followed by the tagline "The smarter way to find a better job," a subtle jab at market leader Monster.

In 2004 HotJobs.com, which had been acquired by Yahoo! in 2002, ranked third in the online recruitment industry, with 10 percent of the market. HotJobs promoted itself primarily through HotJobs Career Expo job fairs and directly through Yahoo!.com, the world's second most used search engine. In 2003 HotJobs expanded its ad efforts with the release in the top 10 markets of 30- and 60-second television spots created by the New York-based agency Bouchez & Kent. In addition, there were print ads, and Internet ads were released across Yahoo!'s related websites. In 2004 HotJobs recruited applicants for The Apprentice, NBC's number one program, in return for brand placement, including HotJobs ads on the doors of the taxis carrying "fired" contestants leaving the show.

MARKETING STRATEGY

The initial 30-second spot in the "Today's the Day" campaign was "Today," first aired on December 26, 2003, during the College Bowl Championship Series. Edited by Hank Corwin of the film-editing company Lost Planet, "Today" featured a montage of 20- to 30-something urbanites getting ready for work. The commercial quickly moved through scenes that included a man and woman waking up in bed, a woman showering, a man exercising, and a woman applying makeup as she rode a city bus. During the montage a female voice-over asked various questions: "Will today be the day that starts the rest of the days?" "Will it be the day you put on your suit?" "Will it be the day you don't hit snooze?" The questions sometimes directly addressed the images. The spot ended with Monster's signature mascot, a bright-green and purple cartoon monster named Trump dancing beneath the words "Today's the day."

Jeff Preiss of production company Epoch Films directed "Today" in an apartment building overlooking downtown Los Angeles, along with nearby locations in Echo Park and Van Nuys, California. He strove to make the spots feel improvised by having actors repeat their lines in rehearsal before filming. He also wanted the spot to have vision and not just be "an anthem in the abstract." "We all felt like Jeff was the guy to go to," Scott Schindler, Deutsch's vice president/associate creative director/art director told Shoot. "He's amazing with casting, and we wanted something that wasn't overly designed and art directed." Preiss had worked previously with Deutsch on ads for MCI.

The format was changed slightly in the next two spots, which were aired during the 2004 Super Bowl. "Soulmates," airing during the first quarter of the game, used Robert Smith's "I Dig You," which repeated the lines "I dig you / you dig me." The spot began by showing the similar morning routines of a middle-aged executive and a young job applicant, for example, struggling over crossword puzzles and feeding their fish just before walking out their doors. The spot suggested that the two, although they were separated by age and by job positions, were compatible. The commercial ended with the two soul mates shaking hands at the start of a job interview and with the Trump mascot and the tagline "Find the one you dig." The third spot, "I Feel Love," featured a number of employees who were enthusiastic about beginning their workday and used the Blue Man Group's rendition of Donna Summer's song "I Feel Love." It ended with the tagline "Get ready for a job you love," again beneath Trump, the dancing Monster mascot.

Internet ads for "Today's the Day" appeared on websites such as Weather.com, Lycos, and About.com. Efforts also went into improving Monster's Web indexing on major search engines so that geographical and vocational keywords were more succinctly correlated with the content of Monster.com. Print ads, using "Today's the day" as the tagline, were also launched in 2004. One ad featured photographs of nine PC monitors, all sitting inside office cubicles and all decorated differently. Soon after the Super Bowl spots, Monster aired a campaign called "Portraits," which was derived from "Today's the Day." The spots featured real job seekers and recruiters explaining what they wanted out of employment. The spots aired throughout February on both network and cable television, including NBC, ABC, ESPN, VH-1, and USA.

TRUMP DANCES FOR MONSTER

Monster's signature mascot, Trump, the animated green monster that resembled a prehistoric toad, was redesigned for the "Today's the Day" campaign. Ad agency Deutsch hired the animation director John Kricfalusi, who had also developed the television hit The Ren & Stimpy Show, to reconstruct the mascot. The airing of the 30-second spot "Today" on December 26, 2003, was Trump's first appearance in cel animation, as opposed to his previous appearances in computer-generated animation (CGI). "He looks great in CGI, and I always thought that was an amazing piece of animation," Scott Schindler, Deutsch's vice president/associate creative director/art director, told Shoot. "But we felt this was a new campaign, and also when people do interact with Trump on the Monster site or see him in print, he is flat. He is a 2-D cartoon. So we wanted to capitalize on that and animate him so that he looked like what he does in print and on the Website."

OUTCOME

Not surprisingly, Monster saw the greatest spike of success on the days after the two ads aired during Super Bowl XXXVIII, thus reaching 143.6 million viewers. On February 2, the day after the game, 62,007 résumés were submitted on Monster.com, surpassing the 53,510 submitted the Monday after Monster's 2003 Super Bowl ads. On February 3, the second day after the 2004 Super Bowl, another 59,126 résumés were uploaded. "Once again, the Super Bowl has proven to be a rewarding venue to propel our brand and new message to millions of viewers all over the country and in almost every demographic," Taylor told Business Wire. "We're excited to build upon this momentum with the launch of a new series of ads featuring real users, the face and voice of Monster."

By October 2004 the Monster division's deferred revenue had reached a new high of $195.4 million, a 52 percent increase over the previous year. Despite the success of the "Today's the Day" campaign, however, by mid-2005 Monster had reassigned its creative responsibilities to a different ad agency, Brand Content. Explaining the shift from Deutsch, Brad Baker, chief product and marketing officer at Monster, told Adweek, "The new Monster voice celebrates the individual, their talents and aspirations … for employers, this means a more qualified candidate to meet their needs." Adweek suggested that the changeover resulted from disputes over fees and issues of "chemistry" in Monster and Deutsch's relationship during the 2003–2005 period. Deutsch retained Monster's media buying and planning duties, however.