Monster India looks to awaken ‘passive job seekers’

Online job portal Monster India has launched a digital campaign around a new theme, ‘Wake Up’. Dentsu Marcom has conceived the campaign that started off with a teaser to seed in the theme #WakeUp. In phase two, the Monster India brand was integrated into the teasers. Thereafter came the reveal film.

The five teaser films feature the protagonist, a young male executive, sleeping on his desk. In each of the films, a funny character - a child dressed like a cow boy, an opera singer, a sheep, Tarzan and a vampire - try their best to wake him up, but in vain. The film ends with a super, “What will it take to wake him up? #WakeUp”

In the main film, the protagonist is seen dining in an empty cafeteria when he hears someone calling out to him. He discovers that it’s the fish on his plate talking to him. The fish asks him to ‘Wake up’ and prompts him to think about his career. It questions him saying, “If I asked you a few years back where you’d see yourself today, what would you have said?” The man answers looks for people around before answering in a softer voice: “I don’t know... More opportunities, better work life may be...” The fish responds, “And yet here you are, talking to a fish (laughs). Look at yourself; you look more dead than me. Hey get out of here... get-out-of-here.” The film ends with a male voice over, “You don’t get wake up calls like these in real life, wake up to find better - better access, better connections,  better jobs. Monster.com - find better.”

There’s more to the  marketing campaign beyond the reveal, explained Sanjay Modi, managing director, Monster.com (India/Middle East/ Southeast Asia). He said, “Once the campaign has seeded in well, post that it is about how we engage with the consumers. The end result is about engagements.”

On the duration of the campaign, Modi said, “We want a sustainability quotient here, so it’s not a campaign where in we come with a burst and get out, because it’s a promise. It’s a response to a seeker and I think this would sustain for minimum three to six months.” The spokesperson added that the jobsite brand would attempt to deliver on the promise of ‘Find better’, by continuously building on newer products and improving existing offerings.

On the campaign theme, he said, “With the new ‘Wake Up’ campaign we take our value proposition to the next level by giving a wakeup call to passive jobseekers who are somehow going on with their routine jobs but don’t feel in control to change it. ‘Wake Up’ campaign is our effort to reawaken their sense of curiosity, control and optimism and communicate a positive ‘call to action’ by emphasising that there is a better opportunity out there.”

On the idea, Titus Upputuru, national creative director, Dentsu Marcom, said, “We had to come up with a creative idea that would not just make people sit up and notice but actually wake them up. So we thought of several ideas and ways to wake people up. Need we say, we put those many waking hours!”

He added, “We had a ball too, going from fiction to mythology to the jungles and almost everywhere. So while a shrilly opera singer, a bleating sheep and a goofy Tarzan try to wake up our protagonist, we had to go underwater to find the ideal one to wake our guy up -someone more dead than him!”

The campaign is visible across several portals, social media sites and digital ad networks, according to the company.

Credits

National creative director: Titus Upputuru 

Sr. creative director: Jitendra Kaushik, Vishal Mittal

Creative supervisor: Aneesh Ayyappan

Sr. visualiser: Himanshu Sharma

Account management: Sunita Prakash, Kapil Jayaraman, Kulanath Kaushik

Account planning: Narayan Devanathan, Rabia Sooch

Films: Dawa Lama

Production house: Native Films

Director (film): Albin Jaison

Producer: Supratik Datta