Posts Tagged ‘Career Builder’
Giant fans are still rejoicing this Monday morning following an entertaining and closely contested Super Bowl. The drama went down to the wire and when Tom Brady and the Patriots were facing a 3rd down and 16th and Brady connected for a first down I thought Brady was on the verge of doing something legendary. It turned out that did not happen and the Giants held on in one of the best games in the history of the Super Bowl.
In addition to football, Super Bowl Sunday also offers the Super Bowl of advertising. At
$3,500,000 per 30 second spot the ad inventory was again sold out for this year’s game and the broadcast will likely have reached more than 110 million people around the world. Since big money and big stakes were at hand the anticipation was high prior to the game for some ground-breaking advertisements. Like the Patriots final drive – most of the Super Bowl ads fell flat as far as I am concerned.
Like many, I watched a number of the preview spots before the game. I liked the longer web version of the Honda CR-V spot with Matthew Broderick reprising Ferris Bueller. It was a great job of melding story and product. Clint Eastwood took on Eminem’s role as spokesperson for Detroit in a great spot from Chrysler/Jeep. Tweets during the game suggested Clint should be running for President.
But for me, many of the spots were just okay at best and some worse than that. The Teleflora spot with the gorgeous Adrienne Lima ended up being patronizing and annoying. And the Coca-Cola Polar bears spots left me scratching my head – didn’t they do that already? Sort of like Career Builder and the chimps. I didn’t think they were that great the first time around. GoDaddy – ugh. The madcap Doritos spots are somewhat amusing and the bag of chips looks shiny but far from brilliant advertising. The Taxact.com spot suggesting that peeing in a pool was akin to the relief you will get by using their product was by far the strangest association. I suspect the Taxact.com website was not crashed by customers clamoring to learn more during or after the game.
Volkswagen about a dog getting in shape was several steps down from the Darth Vader spot of 2011’s Super Bowl. The Cars.com double headed dude was just kind of creepy although I did like the song. Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno for the Acura NSX were a nice combination highlighting their well-known reputation for being car collectors. And the car looked great. Toyota and Lexus ran a few spots that were ho-hum. The same is true of Budweiser and Bud Light (dog trained to get beer – didn’t they do that already?). The Skechers spot with dogs wearing shoes was fun. Bridgestone’s quiet technology exhibited by Steve Nash dribbling a basketball that made little sound was interesting and well done. GE did a couple of nice brand spots that were a welcome relief from the inanity. NBC did a nice job promoting its new show SMASH.
Overall I cannot pick one spot that was head and shoulder above all the others.
How about you? Share your best and worst spot thoughts with us.
I heard a radio spot yesterday from Barracuda Networks. Their offer is to help companies make their workers more productive by blocking/firewalling them from websites and social networks that (as the ad infers) detract from employee productivity and company profits. Their ‘solution’ is to have companies employ their product as a step on the road to productivity. It’s a blatant scare tactic and the barracuda is a pretty scary looking fish after all.
It’s nearly a certainty that there are some business owners and/or managers that will consider this approach as a salve for some of their business problems. I’m not one of them in any way. Walling off employee access to certain websites and social networking is simply a terrible idea.
The idea of restricting access during the workday in order to ‘get people back to work’ will quite possibly have the opposite effect. Pretty soon companies that take that tack will ask employees to leave their mobile devices at the door when they come to work. After all many people now can adroitly access the web and social networks from their iPhone or other smart phone. Take away the websites and social media check-ins and employees will spend more time trying to find a way around it. So exactly how will that approach make things better?
Companies that restrict internet access are telling their employees – ‘We don’t trust you’. “We don’t respect your ability to make appropriate choices on how you spend your time during the work day.” And what kind of bright young minds would be interested in joining a company that approaches its business in that manner?
I’m not so naïve that I think employees always act in the most productive manner every minute of the work day. But is that really the goal of an employer? No I don’t wish that members of our team spend 3 hours a day on Facebook, LinkedIn or looking for a job on Monster or Career Builder, (apparently we had one that did that while here). But I ask those companies that think restricted access is a good idea – do your employees receive and respond to emails before and after the workday? On weekends? For many companies including ours the answer is an unequivocal yes. Granted our company is a smaller one with less than 25 people. But even if we were the size of, oh say Microsoft or Wal-mart, would the restriction of access to the web create a better and more productive working environment?
My take is if you cannot count on having smart, motivated people on your team who know the difference between what is appropriate and what is not, then you have the wrong team in place. It can sometimes be the job of managers to teach employees the difference if they don’t know it already. But forbidding access and censoring sites sounds a bit China like to me.
I wouldn’t want to be a part of a company like that – would you?