Campaign: “Your Calling Is Calling”

Goal: Position Monster as a company that can help job seekers realize their life improvement goals

Duration of campaign: January to present

Integrated elements: TV, print, radio, online

Results: The campaign won Best in Show for advertising excellence from the Association of Independent Commercial Producers and a Cannes Lion award

Budget: Undisclosed

Agency: BBDO New York

Aiming to reinvigorate its brand and expand its global reach, Monster Worldwide this year kicked off a global integrated campaign with a new tagline, “Your calling is calling.”

“The "Your Calling Is Calling' campaign signified a considerable shift for Monster. It was designed to be more personal and provocative than previous campaigns and to position Monster as a resource that can help people realize their life improvement goals,” said Ted Gilvar, chief global marketing officer at Monster.

“In the research we conducted in advance of the campaign, we found that attitudes toward work were changing and that being able to balance a career with the exploration of personal interests is seen as the ultimate goal. Additionally, as Monster has emerged as a worldwide enterprise, we sought to create a global campaign that presented one unified face for the company.”

Monster turned to its agency, BBDO New York, to create an integrated campaign that would communicate this positioning.

Through extensive research, Monster and BBDO New York learned that the new generation of job seekers is very different from previous generations.

“The climb up the ladder is not a straight climb—people are taking very different paths,” said Paul Suchman, senior VP-senior account director at BBDO New York. “There is much more value in creating a work-life balance.”

“We quickly realized that the way to stay relevant is to become much more integral earlier in the job search. With that insight, the strategy became helping Monster evolve from a job transaction machine to a life improvement engine.”

Monster's rebranding campaign kicked off Jan. 1 with four new TV commercials.

The first spot, “Daybreak,” features hundreds of people waking on a Monday morning before dawn and running up a hill to fight off the coming new day. The creative concept behind the spot is that workers view Monday as a battle, but with Monster's help, they can look forward to the start of the workweek.

The second spot, “Slots,” shows workers traveling around a city and in office environments on tracks, representing the mundane nature of their careers. The exception is a worker who breaks free of the slots and makes his own way, thanks to Monster.

Another TV commercial, “Perfect Job,” features a happy worker who travels to the center of the earth to push a wheel that keeps the earth moving.

The final spot, “Stork,” shows a baby being delivered to a doorstep by a stork, who returns 30 years later to find the person working in an office stamping documents. Voice-over says, “Are you reaching your potential?”

The campaign has also included print ads aimed at job seekers and employers, running in such publications as BusinessWeek, Forbes, Fortune, Fortune Small Business, HR Magazine, Human Resource Executive, Staff Digest and Workforce Management.

The ads have headlines such as: “A good employee can be found anywhere. A great employee is on Monster”; “Fill your positions with the well-positioned”; and “Employ the highly employable.”

The campaign has also included radio spots in select global markets and a massive online effort.

The online campaign has featured a complete site redesign as well as rich media brand ads and a demand-generation campaign designed to get people to click through to Monster.com and post their resumes.

The redesigned site, handled by Atmosphere BBDO, includes a new home page with an updated look and feel; an Express Apply feature that streamlines the resume-posting process; a new search engine that lets job seekers refine and modify their searches; and content integrated throughout the site providing relevant advice and information.

“We believe the campaign was successful and represented an important step in Monster being repositioned to resonate with "life enthusiasts'—those who strive for satisfaction in all aspects of their lives, both professional and personal,” Gilvar said. “By extension, it also promises employers access to top talent around the world, not just those people who are unhappy in their current jobs, but those people who want to improve their lives by finding a better opportunity.”