CareerBuilder.com Campaign Offers Sense of Empowerment

by Karl Greenberg, Jan 23, 2008, 5:00 AM

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Online job-finding Web site CareerBuilder.com is launching what a spokesperson calls its largest-ever integrated campaign. It starts with an ad buy during the Super Bowl, and introduces a new tag-line: "Start Building."

This will be the fourth year the company advertises during the game. To start the campaign, which the company says is a $250 million push, two 30-second spots will air during the second and third quarters.

The effort, via Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore., continues the humorous tone the company has used in past ads, where workers had to cope with primates as office mates, or were forced to leap off jungle cliffs into the sea.

While previous ads have parodied horrible working conditions, the new ads take an "empowerment" tone, showing people hauling themselves out of workplace despair and changing jobs.

"This year's campaign is more poignant and urges the sense of empowerment," says Richard Castellini, vice president/consumer marketing at CareerBuilder.com. "It plays on the idea of CareerBuilder.com being a career interventionist, an advocate that motivates you to take charge with no excuses and start building better opportunities for yourself immediately."

The new ads show how 'Tuesday With Morrie'-esque truths get workers off their cans: "If you don't like your job, then get a better one" or "Self-Help Yourself" or "Wishing won't get you a better job."

Media placement for the effort, which includes ad support from CareerBuilder.com owners Gannett, Tribune Company, McClatchy and Microsoft, is intended to target consumers at critical moments. TV ads will run during high-anxiety periods like Sunday evenings, before the dreaded first day of the week; during the commute, or the long, boring midday slog, when, driven by despair and boredom, workers flock to the Web.

Ad buys for the "Start Building" effort include prime-time network and cable television, Internet, local print and sports sponsorships and grassroots efforts.

Outdoor placements will be on high-traffic areas--walls, bus shelters, subways and el trains--and will include a "roadblock" media buy in New York's Grand Central Terminal and on Chicago's el.

The Chicago-based company is also doing metaphoric "street art"-type placement in cities, with things like ladders spanning certain buildings and mannequins climbing the sides of office towers.

Grassroots efforts include "Unhappy Hours" at bars, where CareerBuilder.com will buy drinks for workplace kibitzers, and a tour to some 40 cities and 140 college campuses.

In the past two years, it has launched or acquired Web sites in Canada, the UK, Western Europe, and India. The company, which has 34% market share in the U.S., says this year will see more international expansion via a deal with MSN last year.

The company posted revenue of $672 million in 2006, and $585 million in the first three quarters this year.

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