Category: Portland marketing

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.

Publishers Clearing House Goes Mobile

RRW Consulting’s Direct Marketing Blog alerted me to the fact that Publishers Clearing House is aiming to get into your cell phone. According to Mobile Marketer:

PCH is seeking Apple’s approval for two free, ad-supported apps for the iPhone and iPod touch, which would be distributed via the App Store. PCH has also added social networking feeds to provide tech- and mobile-savvy consumers with updates on games, sweepstakes and other opportunities to win prizes.

While the idea of Ed McMahon texting me (“U R correct, sir!”) fills me with dread, that’s probably not what they have in mind. And as RRW’s Suzanne Obermire points 0ut, ” when PCH decides to use a new channel, it’s probably time for all direct marketers to take note and learn some things.”

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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.

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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.

Impressive Use of Twitter

As much as I’ve tried to keep up with the whole social media thing, Twitter is one wrinkle I haven’t figured out yet. I’m on it, am following some people, and have some people following me. But I haven’t found a way to make it a valuable part of my marketing arsenal.

Not yet, anyway.

Which is why I’m awfully impressed today with Peter Shankman. Shankman, among numerous other projects, operates the “Help a Reporter Out” email service, which connects journalists and writers with sources. As I write this, he’s doing an all-day contest on Twitter. The short version is that he’s asking trivia questions on his Twitter feed, and giving away prizes.

Originally, the prizes were things he wanted to clean out of his office. But as it’s developed, he’s hearing from a bunch of companies who are giving him new things to give away.

It costs him a little bit of money for shipping, and the time to come up with the questions, put ’em out on Twitter, and choose the winners. In  return, he’s getting an enormous amount of attention.

So I’m once again thinking about how I can use Twitter to my advantage. Haven’t come up with the answer yet, but the cogitation continues.

How are you using Twitter to help your business? Leave a comment below.

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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.

Could Newspapers Go Web-Only?

My dad was for many years a highly-respected law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. He also had a thriving side business as an arbitrator. At one point in his career, he took a leave of absence from the university to see if he could arbitrate full-time.

A year or so later, he went back to teaching. He later told me that arbitration jobs became much harder to get when he was no longer a university professor. Once he was back on campus, the demand for his arbitration services went right back up.

It turned out that in the arbitration community, “Professor Bernstein of Washington University” was a powerful brand. It gave him a significant competitive advantage in the marketplace.

I thought of that story today when I read Jeff Jarvis’ suggestion on Huffington Post that it may be time for the Los Angeles Times to turn off its printing presses and go online-only.

His reasoning is that the Times’ web revenue is apparently now greater than its newsroom payroll costs. Eliminate all the costs of printing and distributing a physical product, outsource the national and international reporting to the big national papers, (Wall Street Journal, New York Times, etc), focus all of your efforts and resources on local news, and you’ve got a profitable digital news operation.

As an advertising guy, I see some big questions:

1. How much of that online revenue will disappear when it’s not part of a print advertising package?

2. How important would the LA Times website be, as an advertising vehicle, if it’s not tied to LA Times, the paper? Will readers still go to that website if there’s no physical product to remind them? Will merchants still pay to advertise there if they’re not in the paper, too?

In my radio-and-online world, our websites are becoming increasingly important, to listeners and advertisers. But at least right now, it’s the “on-air” that drives traffic to our sites online. Much of the value advertisers see in being on www.1190kex.com is tied to the reputation and reach of KEX Radio, 1190 on the AM dial; and most of our online advertising is purchased in conjunction with an on-air radio campaign.

If you take away the physical paper, does “LA Times Dot Com” become a thriving online source of local news? Or is it just another web site?

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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.