I’ve been thinking a lot about video recently. I want to dip my toe in the water soon. It’s a powerful medium and the time is right. I’m not very comfortable in front of the camera so I have a lot of natural resistance to getting started. But, it’s good to start crappy and dignity is overrated, so my hats off to all those who’ve already started. Even to Head2Head.ca for trying with "What can 60 hours do for you?":
These guys are the latest to join in job board bashing, produced by a recruiting firm apparently in the hope of creating a viral hit. Here’s a quote from it:
“Stop putting in print ads. Stop posting on job boards. You may as well set fire to your money,”
Good production values and polish, but crappy message and positioning.
Yes it’s important to be entertaining, but it’s even more important to choose the right message. In a way, you could say this video is not crappy enough. All polish and no substance. Does more damage to the brand than the attention will benefit. Ever had a bad experience with a recruiter? Does this video address any of the ways in which a recruiter failed you? Does this video address what the average business owner or entrepreneur or hiring manager has just been through in the last 18 months?
I hear them saying ‘Try us because we’re loud, brash and fast. We’re also creative and can talk a lot about nothing’. All good reasons to look elsewhere.
Back to the drawing board guys…
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I believe you’re correct Eric. Message is everything. Over the past couple of years we’ve been doing tons of video, all on DirectEmployers.org, and one of the hardest pieces is properly conveying THE MESSAGE.. Thank goodness for a Marketing Department!
RE: Criticism
To be fair anyone can be a critic, although only the company can say whether it helped or didn’t. If the video marketing efforts help drive clarity and sales then it obviously helps.
My two cents.. I thought it was funny but it didn’t provide much clarity.. I think they should’ve spent the time and money on changing their Easter Island/Jigsaw-like logo.
Kudos for funny, but have you ever laughed during a commercial and at the end said to yourself "What company was that for?"
**es** I’ve noticed that your videos are ‘on message’ – you guys don’t fool around there! your experience is showing too… what software do you use?
I know the 60 hour video is supposed to be funny but I didn’t really see the humor. Looked forced to me. True anyone can be a critic, and I will give it a go myself soon so I can be the butt of other people’s jokes, lol.
I’m the Director, User Experience for Head2Head.
First, I do want to thank you for the blog post here – it drove 125+ views on YouTube on Dec 15/16, and I’m always appreciative of increased traffic.
Second, I thought I’d respond to some of your comments, because if I’d written a blog post like this – and god knows I have – I’d be interested to hear from the person on the other end.
I’ve been in marketing for 15 years now; during that time, I’ve worked on lots of tv ads/radio ads/videos for lots of clients, from big B2C brands like Coke and Mercedes to little B2B brands like Head2Head, with budgets from $300k down to the $2k this one cost.
(I mention this so you know this isn’t my first time out of the gate.)
"Crappy message"
The message we wanted to convey here was simply "Head2Head knows recruiting and may have some alternatives to contingency recruiting".
I don’t care if people don’t understand the whole ’60 Hours’ thing in 4 minutes – we’ve got a sales team for that.
"[Crappy] positioning"
I’m not sure what you mean by this one, though I can tell you that most people who ‘know’ H2H say that this video totally captures the spirit/vibe of H2H – and that that’s a good thing.
Head2Head is 10 years old, we place more recruiters at more companies than anyone else in Canada, and we’ve grown by 25% per year since 2001. But we’re newer and smaller than the other big players, so we’ve been quite consistent about positioning ourselves as the ‘irreverent’ recruiting brand.
Is this video ‘irreverent’ in B2C terms? Definitely not. Is it a welcome change from the typical snooze-fest of most B2B professional services firms’ videos? Absolutely.
"Ever had a bad experience with a recruiter? Does this video address any of the ways in which a recruiter failed you?"
The target for this video was recruiters/hiring managers, not candidates (except insofar as our clients become our recruiters and vice versa). So we weren’t too concerned about the ‘bad experiences’ candidates may have had with recruiters (though I do write blog posts about that). The big ways in which CLIENTS say recruiters fail them are (a) charging too much; (b) throwing random bodies at jobs; (c) not providing data/feedback. This video does in fact address all these.
Does this video address what the average business owner or entrepreneur or hiring manager has just been through in the last 18 months?"
The #1 thing we’ve heard from clients in the past 18 months is "Find me an alternative to the 20% contingency fee and/or to hiring a full-time permanent recruiter – I need to save money!"
So yes, this does address it.
"Does more damage to the brand than the attention will benefit"
Well, if there’s one thing I miss about my big B2C clients, it’s the big budgets for pre- and post-flight brand awareness and equity. Because I really haven’t got any hard data about this.
What I CAN tell you is that on Dec 21, we put a link to the video in our ‘Holiday Greeting’ email; within 24 hours we had 3 new engagements from clients who said they were calling because they liked our video so much. No one’s fired us as a result, so – so far, at least – we haven’t seen any damage to the brand.
And ultimately, marketing’s job is simply to ‘sell more stuff’, so on that basis, we’re quite happy with the results of the video.
Anyway, thanks again for the traffic – and for making me interested enough to write this (long) response. The #1 challenge with marketing is sinking into a morass of personal opinion, so it’s good for me to summarize our strategy objectively.
Sarah
**es** thank you for commenting Sarah, I’m glad my post drove some traffic your way.
Considering the low cost of your video, I’m sure it was a good experience if your intention was to get this message out: "Head2Head knows recruiting and may have some alternatives to contingency recruiting".
It just
seems to me you have set your goals a little low.
When I wrote "Ever had a bad experience with a recruiter? Does this video address any of the ways in which a recruiter failed you?" I was talking about employers, not candidates.
My own very limited experiences hiring recruiters were very disappointing and your video did not address those pitfalls for me.
Your firm is obviously very successful so it can’t hurt to keep doing whatever you’re doing already. Still, if you aim higher than "irreverent" with your message, I’m sure your ROI will go way up. If it were me, I would focus deeply on the ‘random bodies’ problem. You may have addressed that, but it made no impact on me. Perhaps the humor obscured the attempt.
When you hire the wrong guy and you paid someone thousands of dollars for the privilege, you have deep feelings about the subject. The right message would resonate strongly.
-Eric
Just saw this blog post – which actually drove about the same amount of views as yours – with a totally different take on the video (i.e. they loved it):
http://www.ere.net/2009/12/14/a-video-a-video-game-and-vault/