Dice.com Viral Site Lets IT Guys Get Revenge

A new viral campaign launched by Modem Media for IT job board Dice.com gives IT job seekers a chance to virtually strike back at annoying business managers.

At the BeingIT mini-site, users navigate a Flash-based office to find members of management who “want a word” with Joe IT, the IT Guy. In a scenario that surely runs through the head of many IT workers on a regular basis, Joe IT is able to show the business manager just what he’s going to do about the manager’s problem.

“The client wanted a campaign that would raise the level of awareness of the brand. Until now, they had mainly been doing banners and direct-response-type ads,” Sloan Broderick, associate director of marketing at ModemMedia and the client lead on the Dice.com account, told ClickZ News. “Dice as a brand is really geeky, and they wanted to do something to show IT guys that they understand what they’re up against.”

When the user visits the office of the CIO, project or sales manager, Joe IT is subjected to their buzzword-laden speeches demanding he bend to their will. Joe’s stress level monitor soon reaches overload. The user is then given a choice of three whimsical weapons to assault the manager with, including a jelly donut bazooka, a head-shrinking gun, and a pizza launcher.

Users then see the tagline, “Does your job suck? Find one that doesn’t. Go to Dice.com.” They then have the option of initiating a job search on Dice.com, using a different weapon on the same manager, returning to the office map to find another manager, or they can “share the pain” by emailing the site to a friend.

“We did some focus group work with Dice’s users to see what real-world frustrations IT guys were having with management. Judging by some of the comments we’re seeing out there, we seem to have struck a nerve with these,” Broderick said.

Since launching the campaign on the Dice.com site and in emails on January 17, the campaign has generated quite a bit of buzz. It’s been “minimally supported” by online ad placements, according to Broderick, but over 70 blogs have linked to the BeingIT mini-site in the first two weeks. Dice.com saw its highest traffic ever on the day it was launched. In addition, the forward-to-a-friend feature is generating a 10 to 15-percent forward rate.

“It’s blown away all of our expectations. It’s got people talking about Dice as an organization, and before this, that rarely, if ever, happened. And even though it’s not intended to be measured by the activity on Dice.com that’s being driven, it’s an added bonus that it’s driving new users and registrations to the site,” Broderick said.