OK....it was us

A few weeks ago The Marketer and I
posted about an interesting job advertisement
that was doing the rounds. It probably wasn't
hard for many readers to work out that it was for my Newcastle advertising agency, Sticky.

The campaign to attract a new web designer is a great example of the direction we are taking Sticky. Employ totally different thinking to traditional advertising challenges.

And didn't it work a treat?!

The ad was placed in the Saturday Newcastle Herald employment section and released virally to students at Newcastle University and TAFE. Meanwhile our friend Servant of Chaos also picked up the ad and posted on it. A week later we also placed the ad on Seek.com.au

Interested parties, and inquisitive souls, were encouraged to go to our designated website sh1thotdesigner.com to find out more and then send us 15 second flash animation with the themes "evolution and different".

So why did we do it this way?

Firstly, most job ads are boring and don't do much to attract attention. Our response was to do a bold and bright ad that cut straight to the chase, "Are you a shit hot web designer?". We decided it should be a little mysterious and tweak the imaginations of the more adventurous designers out there.

Secondly, we wanted to use technologies and strategies that our target market would understand and appreciate. Therefore it was released virally, utilised a web page for more info and requested a digital response.

Thirdly, we wanted to be able to measure readership and reaction to the ad. By directing everyone to the website we were able to see exactly how many people read the job description and where they came from. It gave us very good information.

Finally, we were casting a wide net for a very narrow search. The person we were searching for is highly skilled and specialised. They had to show personality and understanding of our belief in social media. We didn't want to waste time talking to professional resume senders or designers who couldn't be bothered going through the whole process to get the job.

The campaign was a great success. We had a lot of traffic through the website and some excellent applications. Several did send us resumes without making the effort to include the requested animation. While we didn't totally discount those people, it certainly hurt their chances.

In the end once candidate stood out as the obvious choice before we even spoke to him. A great resume, excellent animation submission, a good understanding of social media (which was evident in the links to sites he had created) and a very creative mind. Best of all, he turned out to be a really nice guy too.

Mitch Hawkins is the newest member of Sticky Advertising's Digital and Interactive division. Welcome Mitch.

Comments

[Julian Cole]

Great ad, you guys are right on the money. I love the fact that you used the website to gain marketing intelligence. This would be great information and be a real value to future clients.

I was just wondering when you say 'virally released', what does this mean?

[Media Hunter]

Julian

"Viral" is a pretty loose term that is used a lot and not necessarily correctly. In this case we released the ad via email to a handful of influential people at several locations, the Uni, Tafe and Servant of Chaos. From there we have evidence that the ad was passed around to a large number of relevant people. we were able to easily identify the hits from The Marketer, Media Hunter and Servant of Chaos. Staging the timing of each release meant that we were able to surmise that a large number of hits came from the Uni and Tafe releases prior to it hitting the local press.

I consider "viral" to be passed from person to person and in this case it happened. Not sure if thats a great use of the term but that was the intention and reality.

Thx for the feedback.