Death of an Advertising Agency:Part 8 of 12 - Leaving the Nest

Posted on July 26, 2007
Filed Under Death of An Advertising Agency |

Please note: This is part eight of a twelve part series. A new entry will be made each Thursday. To view the entire series, please visit the Death of an Ad Agency category.

After discovering our new found solution of Online Career Centers and marketing them in newspaper ads as well as all collateral materials, I was eager to share my findings with Ted Stepien, my partner in Classified USA of Nevada.

Ted also owned operated Classified USA in Cleveland, San Diego, Boston and Toronto. As the founder of NAS Recruitment Communications in 1947, obviously Ted had a firm knowledge of the recruitment advertising industry.

Unfortunately, Ted’s knowledge of the Internet and what we were doing with Online Career Centers was just not as strong. He did not understand. His train of thought for over 50 years was to just place the ad in the daily newspaper. If that did not work, make the ad bigger or place it in other newspapers.

Ted and I agreed that Online Career Centers were indeed an effective solution. We just struggled with the change in the fundamentals of the business model. Ted was a ‘print guy.’ I was quickly becoming an ‘interactive guy.’ Ted was still using the fax machine as his primary means of communication. We were using sophisticated computer systems with online collaboration capabilities.

As Ted did not understand my infatuation with technology, I could not allow any resistance in the way of delivering our clientele the best service possible. Ted and I met in Cleveland and I made arrangements to buy Ted’s shares of Classified USA of Nevada. Ted would still mentor where he could, but would no longer be involved in the day to day operations. We were officially ‘Leaving the Nest.’

Along with the change in ownership, came a change in the name of the recruitment advertising agency. Taking into consideration our mission and position within the market place, I chose Diversified Recruitment Advertising as the new name. “Diversified” emphasized our mission of diversifying our client’s advertising efforts, to reach more qualified candidates and, ultimately, improve the quality of new hires.

As we assembled our strategic plan to transition from Classified USA of Nevada to Diversified Recruitment Advertising, it was the perfect time to invest in a branding campaign to strengthen our position in the marketplace. At this point in time, a few competitors had opened a Las Vegas office including Bernard Hodes Group, JWT and TMP. We needed to stand out as the industry and local market leader.

The marketing campaign focused on our new found successes with the Online Career Centers. We analyzed the results we had with some of our beta-customers and found that many experienced a four to five fold increase in qualified applicant flow due to the extended reach, while simultaneously lowering their overall recruitment advertising costs an average of 60-75 percent.

A series of seminars were scheduled and we began to invite top employers throughout the Las Vegas Valley to learn more about this creative and effective recruiting solution. The message was quite simple:

Focus more on employment branding.
Reduce the size of your current display ads by removing unnecessary job descriptions and only advertise a laundry list of open job titles, telling the job-seeker to visit the Online Career Center to get the full description.
Reinvest a portion of that savings in other media to expand your reach (and brand) using the same methodology of sending jobseekers to the Online Career Center.
Use the Online Career Center to reinforce and strengthen the employment brand, providing the jobseeker a complete job description, description of the company culture and an opportunity to learn more about the company including employee testimonials and company tours.
Gather information from the jobseeker to open a two-way communication and allow the jobseeker to apply online in a digital format.

What many customers did not realize at the time was that an even greater volume of traffic (jobseekers) was being delivered by our online job board presence. In 1999, approximately 60% of the public had Internet access and the Job Board phenomenon was just getting started when Monster and HotJobs both advertised during the Superbowl. Jobseekers learned that they could find more opportunities surfing the web and learn more about the companies they were applying for with the click of a mouse than they could reading a newspaper ad.

Diversified Recruitment Advertising was out of the gate and running (or out of the nest and flying). Within a short period of time, we more than tripled our client base, delivering stellar results to the likes of Valley Health System, Burger King, Merck, Clark County, HMS Host, Boyd Gaming, City of Las Vegas and Fremont Medical Centers, amongst many, many more.

Each client had specific needs and we serviced each differently. Some needed to expand their reach into national industry publications while others needed a newspaper that served the Boulder City or Laughlin markets. Our public sector clients just wanted one point of contact to manage the placement process, gather tear sheets and provide them with a sworn affidavit for ease of use.

We became masters of media buying. We assembled and managed the most comprehensive list of effective advertising outlets for Las Vegas employers. Our list included large newspapers, small publications, niche publications and journals, regional and industry-specific. There were few that we were not aware of and none that we neglected to test and measure their results. We shared our findings (or best practices) with all of our clients.

What we did not comprehend at the time was that the more we educated our clients as to what works best, the more we offended the Las Vegas Review Journal. The RJ had worked so hard, for so many years, brain-washing employers that they were the only game in town and that nothing else worked. And, now many employers were learning different.

Employers were learning the truth.