Monster Goes Local with New Ad Campaign

In a departure from its splashy Super Bowl advertisements in years past, Monster has kicked off an advertising campaign for 2005 aimed at reaching local employers and job seekers. Through two strategic partnerships, Monster’s banner ads will appear on the Web sites of local TV and radio stations. Those ads will link to co-branded locally-oriented microsites that provide job search and promotional offers.

“Our focus in 2005 is to leverage our current position in the marketplace and expand our reach at the local level,” said John Kelley, SVP of marketing at Monster.

To meet that goal, the campaign will run on Infinity Broadcasting’s 180 radio stations and on their Web sites. It will also appear on 57 local television stations and their Web sites nationwide — the Internet Broadcasting Systems (IBS) network. Both deals are set to run for a year.

As part of the campaign kick off, Monster is offering local employers new to Monster’s service one free U.S.-based job listing via the URL: http://freeposting.monster.com/. Those free listings go live on February 1 and will remain live for the first seven days of February.

To drive jobseekers to its site during this time, Monster will reward them when they upload or edit a new or existing resume during the month of January. The incentives are a free month of music via Rhapsody, one free music download and an entry into a drawing for a $50,000 cash prize.

Under the terms of the IBS deal, Monster will power the career pages for the education, technology, business, and family sections of IBS Web sites. Those career pages will get promotion on co-branded local television spots and through banner ads throughout the IBS Web sites.

“While we remain committed to expanding our enterprise company clients, we also see great potential in small- and mid-sized businesses in local markets,” said Kelley.

The unveiling of these two strategic marketing partnerships follows Monster Chairman and Chief Executive Andrew McKelvey’s announcement last month that Monster’s goal is to have 75 to 80 percent of its revenues come from small to medium-sized local businesses in the next three or four years.