Marketing – Page 31 – Phil Bernstein's Advertising, Marketing, and Sales Training Blog

Recruiting Case Study: Radio Gets Results for Owens Corning

Owens Corning was preparing to open a new plant in Gresham, Oregon. They needed to recruit skilled workers for some tough-to-fill positions.

So Owens Corning decided to give radio advertising a try. We put together a combination radio-and-online campaign on 1190 KEX Radio in Portland.

Did it work? We’ll let John McClellan of Owens Corning tell the story:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSk7rVRVUCs]

Candidates who heard the ad were directed to type in the keyword “Owens Corning” in the search bar on the KEX web site. This took them to a special page we built which described the open positions and qualifications. The page had a link so that candidates could email resumes directly to an Owens Corning recruiter.

It was easy for Owens Corning to track results and know exactly what they got from the campaign.

While the traditional recruitment advertising methods, such as classified ads, job boards, and career fairs, are good at attracting the “active” job seeker, they miss the very desirable “passive” candidate — the currently employed worker who isn’t seeking a new job, but would be open to a new opportunity.

Radio advertising excels at reaching those candidates as they drive to and from work, and on the job site.

If you’ve got positions to fill in the Portland/Salem/Vancouver area, Phil Bernstein — that’s me! — can help you get these kind of results. Give me a call at 503-323-6553, or email me here.

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Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein at 503-323-6553.

Duncan Interviews Bernstein III

In the third part of our conversation on Marketing in Progress, Brett Duncan and I talk about

some advantages to advertising on news/talk radio
the place of streaming audio in an advertising campaign
and my continuing quest to make blogging pay

If you want to go back to the beginning, all three parts of the Brett Duncan-Phil Bernstein interview are here.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein at 503-323-6553.

Southern Auto Dealer Shares His Opinions

In case you were thinking that the recent Presidential election signals a new, color-blind United States of America, there’s some evidence that we may not be there yet.

A Savannah, GA auto dealer named O. C. Welch was in a foul mood one day recently, and happened to be near a microphone. You can hear the resulting hairball of a radio commercial here, on my colleague Mike Copeland’s blog.

Factually dubious (many of the Toyotas he’s complaining about are built by Americans in Alabama, Kentucky, Texas, West Virginia, and Indiana) and downright racist (“rice-ready”???), the ad acts as a sixty-second test for Savannah:

How many angry bigots are in the market for a new car this weekend?

___________________________________________________________________________________

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein at 503-323-6553.

Opportunity Missed

The cover story in the current Business Week contains a powerful photograph of a man in New York’s Times Square. I don’t know him or anything about his situation, and hope he finds a job soon. But I can’t help but lament the opportunity he may have missed.

Within that missed opportunity is a copywriting lesson for all advertisers.

0851_jobless1

In case the text is too small to read, here’s what the sign said:

Almost Homeless

Looking for Employment

Very Experienced Operations
and
Administration Manager

Desperately seeking full time
employment
with insurance benefits
for self and family
Disabled wife on 15 medications

Request a copy of my resume!

Any kind of help would be greatly appreciated

That sign was seen by hundreds, if not thousands, of people walking by as he stood on the street. This week, it will be seen by hundreds of thousands of business people who read the magazine. Some of those people might be in a position to hire him.

If only the sign had given those hiring managers a reason to interview him, and a way to get in touch.

The man has something of value to sell — his time and labor. He’s the advertiser, his sign is his advertising medium, and hiring managers are his prospects. Unfortunately, the copy is all about him, and not about his prospects.

That same sign could have contained some basic information about his experience and skills. It could have talked about the value he could deliver, and the problems he could solve, for a potential employer. It could have contained a phone number or email address — that contact information would now be in the hands of every Business Week reader.

I don’t mean to make light of his situation — I feel awful for him and his family, and sincerely hope that as I write this post, he’s getting ready for his first day at a new job.

Copywriting guru Dan O’Day puts it this way: “Don’t tell me about your grass seed. Tell me about my lawn.”

Your odds of success will increase when you make the message about your prospect, not about you.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein at 503-323-6553.