The Internet job-search service HotJobs.com will spend $2.5 million to $3 million for one 30-second Super Bowl spot — the airtime alone costs $1.6 million — despite 1998 revenues of less than $5 million.
"We're basically putting up the cash right now to show that we want to play," said Robert Liu, who handles marketing and publicity for the fledgling company. "If we can get 10 percent, even 5 percent of the viewers — you can see what kind of traffic that translates into."
However, he added, "If this doesn't work, we're screwed."
How bad would it be? HotJobs co-founder Richard Johnson put up personal assets of undisclosed value to secure funding for the ad. Those are the stakes for the company, which is trying to stand out in a highly competitive field of about 3,500 sites dominated by Monster.com.
The ad, which will reportedly air early in the third quarter, was produced by McCann-Erickson Detroit and features a security guard in a dead-end job whose computer springs to life on the HotJobs Web site. The watchman then imagines himself in several available — and more attractive — occupations.
HotJobs executives could know by the next day how well they scored with the game's more than 100 million viewers. Success will bring more hits on their Web site, and the more traffic they generate, the more likely Fortune 500 companies looking to hire will sign on as clients.
Despite the risk, Liu said the decision to do it was an easy one. Autobytel.com dramatically increased its Web site traffic and became a leader in online car buying in 1997 as the first Internet-based company to advertise during the Super Bowl.
"This is the logical thing for us," Liu said. "There's going to be a tremendous shakeout in the next 12 to 18 months, and whoever becomes the household name is going to gain market share."
But what Johnson calls HotJobs' "coming out" party has been anything but a good time for company executives. With less than two weeks to go before Fox Broadcasting's Jan. 25 deadline, the ad was still far from complete. In fact, McCann-Erickson was hired only six weeks before the ad was due. Johnson fired HotJobs' first agency, Hill Holliday Connors Cosmopulos of Boston, after Fox, Johnson said, rejected its proposed ad as "tasteless."
The spot featured an elephant and a zookeeper who disappears when the pachyderm sits down to highlight the perils of a dead-end job. Johnson said viewers would have thought the ad "one of the funniest things they ever saw," but censors at the network that brought us "Married ...With Children" and "Melrose Place" disagreed.
That was in late November. On
Dec. 4, Johnson ran into McCann-
Erickson executive creative director
Kevin Moehlenkamp on a New York
train. The conversation eventually
touched on HotJobs' predicament, and Moehlenkamp, a veteran of Super Bowl campaigns past, told Johnson he'd call the next day.
"It was a golden opportunity," said McCann-Erickson senior creative director Tom Giovagnoli. "We came up with 20 to 30 ideas overnight."
Giovagnoli, who worked with Moehlenkamp on previous Super Bowl campaigns at BBDO, said the concepts focused on the do-it-yourself aspect of online job hunting, where you can "wander in [to a Web site], play around and maybe find yourself interested in a job you didn't even know existed."
When the agency crew flew into New York for meetings with its client Dec. 14 and 15, it brought seven solid proposals. Giovagnoli did not want to discuss the ones that were not chosen because he hopes they will be used in the future.
The one that was chosen — and approved by Fox — does not give up all its edginess. Each of the security guard's fantasies is embellished by the presence of three attractive women. But that's all either Giovagnoli or Liu would say about the ads.
"You have to see the dream sequences," Liu said.
"We got to have a lot of fun with his imagination," Giovagnoli said.
The concept agreed on, it was on to hiring the talent. Within the next week, McCann-Erickson landed noted British director Trevor Robinson, whose ad for Britain's Tango carbonated fruit drinks were part of "an offbeat and colorful reel that's a lot of fun," Giovagnoli said. None of the featured players has much of an identity, although the security guard had a small part in the movie "Saving Private Ryan."
The agency's creative team spent the week between Christmas and New Year's building sets. Shooting took place over two 16-hour days on Jan. 5 and 6, and the ad was cut over the equally grueling weekend of Jan. 9 and 10, Liu said.
"There were so many pagers going off that weekend that nobody needed an alarm clock," Liu said.
Giovagnoli said the ad took an additional week "to assemble," which mostly means adding music and tweaking it. "We have to ship on the 24th of January," he said. As of last Wednesday, the project was on schedule. "Fox needs to have it about a week in advance."
Liu said no one at HotJobs has been fiddling with the stress balls favored by the security guard in the ad, but that there have been anxious moments.
"I don't think it ever got to a panic stage," he said. "It's been a very emotional process. There have been a tremendous number of ups and downs — a lot of unexpected downs, in terms of changing agencies — and also finding out that there were a lot of things out of our control."
One of those things was the decision of TNT Worldwide, the parent com-pany of job-site industry giant Monster.com, to secure two 30-second Super Bowl spots and another during Fox's pregame announcement of the "All-Madden, All-Millennium Team." Still uncertain is how many of the game's projected viewers might walk away from a lopsided game before HotJobs' $3 million ad runs.
Nevertheless, there are no regrets, Liu said. Even the most well-known Internet companies — most of them not yet profitable — spend heavily on advertising. HotJobs' Super Bowl campaign is part of an increase from $2 million in ad spending in 1998 to between $5 million and $10 million in 1999.
And with Oracle, the Walt Disney Co. and Nike Inc. as clients and 135,000 resumes in its database, HotJobs will still have a piece of the job-search market next Monday.
"What we're spending as a percentage of our budget is absurd," Liu said. "This is a pivotal stage."
