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BY NICOLE KUZNIA
Medill News Service | Sunday, February 05, 2006 | (No comments posted.)
Advertising isn't monkey business anymore. When Chicago-based CareerBuilder.com launches its Super Bowl ad campaign today, its award-winning chimpanzees will make the leap from television sets to the Web.
The online job search company will use what's called viral advertising, a new trend that utilizes "existing social networks" to increase brand awareness, often through the Internet. Data released by audience measurement company comScore Networks indicates marketers who plunk down cash for television often benefit from additional exposure online.
According to comScore, 2005 Super Bowl advertisers Anheuser-Busch Co. Inc. and General Motors Corp. saw consumers flock to the Internet in response to their commercials. Traffic to the Budweiser Web site that day increased 594 percent from the average traffic for the four preceding Sundays.
Cadillac's Web site drew an increase of 171 percent.
InsightExpress, a market-research firm, found that 25 percent of Super Bowl viewers will visit a Web site to view an ad from the game. Additionally, 28 percent of the viewers who replay an ad online do so because they "want to see what everyone was talking about."
CareerBuilder's television ads will steer viewers to a Web site. Once there, the consumer will be able to send a "monk-e-mail," a custom e-mail greeting card featuring a monkey who speaks in the sender's voice.
Chicago advertising agency Cramer-Krasselt created the 2006 campaign.
The television ads will again feature a human employee working in an office occupied by chimpanzee co-workers.
Cramer-Krasselt General Manager Karen Seamen thinks the future of communications revolves around multiple touch points. "Viral won't replace traditional media," Seamen said. "It's more about having additional tools in the arsenal. For so many people, (the Internet) is their main mode of communication."
The allure in viral advertising is that it gets people talking, which leads to compound returns. "The goal is to try and get as much spotlight on CareerBuilder as possible," Seamen said. "We remind and then reinforce."
Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, said the big game was a key contributor to CareerBuilder's success in 2005. "The Super Bowl is a great starting point for these extensive marketing programs," Calkins said. "Then, the online content can broaden out a campaign."
"We saw a 50 percent increase in brand awareness after the 2005 campaign," said Richard Castellini, vice president of consumer marketing at CareerBuilder.
During 2005, according to CareerBuilder, it moved into the No. 1 position among online job search engines.
To date, one of the most successful viral ad campaigns was launched by Burger King Corp. in April 2004. The fast food chain featured a Web site with a life-sized chicken ready to take direction from viewers. According to Adweek Magazine, the site drew a million hits the first day and 20 million in the first week.
Viral spending is difficult to measure, but Internet advertising continues to rise. According to TNS Media Intelligence, marketers spent $7.4 billion on Internet advertising in 2004, a 21 percent increase over a year earlier.
Through the first nine months of 2005, spending was up an additional 12 percent to $6.1 billion.
With this year's television ads for the Super Bowl costing $2.5 million per 30-second spot, the risk must be worth the reward. According to the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association, nearly 145 million people will watch today's game, or nearly half of the U.S. population. Almost 24 percent of them watch primarily for the commercials.
But getting a good response from this huge crowd takes careful planning.
Reprise Media is a three-year-old company that provides the final step for viral advertisers. According to the company Web site, Reprise offers a service called organic search optimization that allows advertisers to purchase key Internet search words.
Castellini said the practice will pay off for CareerBuilder. "If someone sees the commercial and types 'monkey ads' in their browser, it will direct them to (the CareerBuilder) site."
According to Seamen, depending on the overall ad campaign, purchasing Internet keywords can be useful. "In general it's just another strategy to surround (the consumer) and give them as many avenues as possible."
The final step in CareerBuilder's campaign is to cater directly to people who will ultimately use the site to find employment. "We try to reach people who aren't actively looking, but think their job is just not for them," Seamen said.
This means Cramer-Krasselt sought to place programming early in the week, when people tend to dread work the most. Of the 27 CareerBuilder spots shown on major networks, 20 of them will run on either Sunday or Monday. "Those days are the worst for unhappy people," Seamen said. "We want to be their wake-up call."
So what's next? Some advertising insiders think today's most popular commercials will be available for download onto Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod, furthering the ads' already lengthy reach.
"We are looking into that right now," Seamen said.
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