Monster Ramps Up Marketing

Deals with Viacom and Ziff Davis Media highlight a renewed advertising push.

Online career site Monster is taking the wraps off a big-budget advertising campaign as competitive pressure mounts from new rival Yahoo .

Maynard, Mass.-based Monster, the online unit of recruitment and yellow pages advertising giant TMP Worldwide , turned to Viacom to handle its television, outdoor and online work, and selected technology publisher Ziff Davis Media for outreach to the IT job sector. Spending was not disclosed.

The career site’s work with New York-based Viacom will center around a contest in which the media conglomerate will award “dream jobs” at its CBS Television, MTV and VH1 units — such as being a co-host on VH1’s “Top Twenty Countdown” show. To register, players must submit their resume to Monster.

Spots and billboards running on the three networks will promote the contest. Ads during CBS’s Monday-night primetime lineup also will promote “Trump Trivia” — questions featuring not the New York real estate mogul, but the site’s spokes-creature, Trumpasaurus.

Meanwhile, in conjunction with MarketWatch.com , in which Viacom owns a stake, Monster becomes the exclusive sponsor of the syndicated financial news show “CBS MarketWatch Weekend.” The career site also receives exclusive ownership of “The Monster Report,” a bimonthly segment during the show that covers employment and human resources.

On the Web, MarketWatch.com will launch a co-branded career center featuring Monster’s job search and tips. MarketWatch’s tech column, “Silicon Stocks,” also will prominently feature Monster.

Creative for the effort will continue Monster’s current “Never Settle” campaign, which it launched in January with an over-$1 million buy during the Super Bowl. Now, the site is planning to continue the message with an expanded media plan designed to reach a diverse consumer and B2B/financial audience.

“Our relationship with Viacom will be instrumental in conveying the Monster brand to an expansive audience,” said Peter Blacklow, senior vice president of marketing at Monster. “This relationship is another key step in the growth of the Monster brand; people will associate Monster with careers and the ‘Never Settle’ tagline that has become the focus of our mission.”

Meanwhile, Monster plans a buy across Ziff Davis’ magazines and Web sites to increase its appeal to technology job seekers. Monster will receive billing as the premiere provider of technology career content for Ziff Davis Media’s properties, with articles and information from the recruitment site appearing in ZD Media magazines and sites.

Monster also said it would provide free subscriptions to Ziff Davis Media magazines for registered job-seekers in the technology sector. The firm also said it would develop co-branded career Web sites specializing in tech jobs, in partnership with the New York-based publisher’s PC Magazine and eWeek titles.

“By providing the career content for Ziff Davis Media publications and websites, job seekers will have the most up-to-date and relevant IT career information,” said Steve Pogorzelski, president of Monster North America. “We will continue to offer the tools, services, and career and business information that will help job seekers manage and thrive in their career endeavors by partnering with such leading companies as Ziff Davis Media.”

Terms were not disclosed for either of the agreements, which were orchestrated by Monster’s ad agency, Arnold Worldwide. In return for its advertising buy, however, Monster has said it would promote Ziff Davis magazine subscriptions via opt-in emails and newsletters. Technology-related portions of Monster’s site also will advertise Ziff Davis Media properties.

The deal comes as Yahoo finalizes the integration of HotJobs.com into its own job-listings offerings, which analysts expect will have a positive effect on the Sunnyvale, Calif. Web portal’s bottom line. In addition, the union with New York-based HotJobs, which ranks second in popularity behind Monster, gives the job site access to some of the most valuable online media for in-house promotion.

At the same time, Monster’s agreement with Ziff Davis comes just months after Bart Catalane resigned from a restructuring TMP Worldwide, where he had served as chief financial officer, to take the post of CFO and chief operating officer at Ziff Davis. Evidently, there’s little in the way of ill will between Catalane and his former employer, at least with regard to taking Monster on as an advertising client — especially since a major line of credit for the publisher is due to expire at the end of June.

“As a former executive of TMP Worldwide, I am very familiar with Monster’s reach into the technology market,” Catalane said in a statement. “The synergy between the two companies will now be able to provide [our] targeted, valuable and growing audience, with the best and most innovative content in the market through Monster.”

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