BOSTON.COM
New Media Report - February 16, 1998
Every print publisher with an inkling of Web smarts stamps their URL throughout its newspaper, magazine or newsletter. But how many run demographically targeted spots on seven local radio stations, mail fleece blankets to potential advertisers and pay a plane to fly a banner with its domain name above a major sporting event?
Marketing executives at Boston Globe Electronic Publishing's Boston.com used all of those tactics and more to build consumer and client awareness for its Careers.boston.com site, which launched in October 1997. For all of its promotion, Boston.com stresses creativity and the "coolest" place to build awareness, says Lisa DeSisto, the site's director of marketing. "We've never done a mouse pad and I don't think we ever will," she says.
Boston.com's three-person marketing team, two free-lance creative contributors and media buyer Blitz Media are perpetually trying to answer this question: "What can we do that will shake the city up?" DeSisto says.
The Careers.boston.com promotions shook up its target audience of online users age 25 to 49 (same as the main site) and the judges of Editor & Publisher's (E&P) Best Online Newspaper Awards, who presented the site with its Best Promotion of a Newspaper Online Service prize earlier this month.
"They seem to have pulled out all of the stops" for the campaign, says Len Muscarella, managing director of Interactive Media Associates, Inc., the consulting firm that administered the contest for E&P. One of the judges said Boston.com used a "very strong, imaginative" campaign with smartly targeted ads in the city's main alternative newspaper and top radio stations.
Searches on the careers site, which is marketed as a sub-brand of Boston.com, went from 300,000 in October to 450,000 in February, according to DeSisto.
Careers.boston.com isn't the richest career site created by an online newspaper -- washingtonpost.com and the San Jose Mercury Center offer more resources -- but job hunters will be pleased with the free, searchable database of 12,000 positions.
The site includes information about 401K plans and links to career fairs (courtesy of careerfairs.com) and the national job site Careerpath.com (of which the Globe is a cofounder).
The bulk of the ads are repurposed from the print paper at no extra cost to advertisers. The site is having moderate success selling online-only ads priced at $95 for four weeks, says Keith Yocum, director of classifieds/advertising. The one-day rate for help-wanted ads in The Boston Globe is $13.75/agate line. The careers site also generates revenue by selling space for employers to post company profiles. Those packages, which have been purchased by about 22 employers, being at $400 per month.
THE CAMPAIGN
DeSisto and her team developed cross-media campaigns in the past, and they wanted to continue this strategy while brainstorming ideas for Careers.boston.com last Fall. To reach consumers, the site placed ads in the Boston Globe and bought page insertions in the alternative newspaper, the Boston Phoenix. The site leveraged its promotional and content-sharing relationship with Boston Magazine for a full-page ad aimed at the publication's upscale readership. The ad copy read "Careers.boston.com -- Elevating tax brackets since 1997."
Boston.com's media buyers developed three spots focused on a "dream job" scenario for radio stations with programming schedules ranging from all-news to adult contemporary to alternative. Online banners appeared on Boston.com, the radio stations' sites and the Boston Globe channel on the PointCast Network.
In what DeSisto calls a "guerilla marketing" tactic, the site spent about $800 for one day's worth of aerial advertising at The Head of the Charles Regatta, one of the world's largest rowing events and a major Boston happening.
In its most clever idea, the site mailed a fleece blanket with an embroidered Careers.boston.com logo to 400 recruitment agencies and human resources managers. The package also included a packet of hot cocoa to reinforce the message that these firms should "warm up" to online advertising.
Careers.boston.com followed up by outsourcing a firm that called everyone who received a blanket and attempted to set up appointments with the site's sales team. Yocum says the site generated a significant number of sales because of this marketing and call-back effort.
A unique approach is required when it comes to reaching ad buyers, who are overwhelmed with pitches, DeSisto says. Even at $20 per package, the expense was worthwhile because the site made the money back easily and quickly, DeSisto says.
Next time, however, she'll hand over a similar project to a mailing house because it required the staff more than two weeks to assemble and send the packages.
(Boston.com, Lisa DeSisto, 617/929-7900; Keith Yocum, 617/929-2405; IMA, Len Muscarella, 973/539-5255.)
