Descending to Climb

As a cyclist, I know all too well the meaning of the phrase "what goes down must come up." No, I didn't write that incorrectly. Gravity is very much a factor when riding a bike, and in the two-wheeled world, the descent is always the playful part of the ride. The only problem: unless you had already climbed up beforehand, your fun little downhill will inevitably be followed by an uptick in the road/trail and some slogging for you to get to your next goal.

When I saw the new ad campaign for the career website TheLadders.com, I had more than a WTF moment. I had a WTF hour, wondering what the marketing execs had been smoking when they approved the campaign. Video examples and how in the world this relates to the topic above after the jump.

The Ladders.com bills itself as a high-end job search website,posting "$100K jobs for $100K candidates" according to an old campaign from a couple of years ago. Currently in the middle of my own job search, I use the site daily, and I've found it to be a great tool, and much less cluttered than the other usual suspects out on the interwebs (Monster, CareerBuilder, etc). In fact, you could say that I'm the sweetspot target customer for The Ladders. So, when I saw their new ad push for 2011, you can imagine my chagrin (shock? disbelief?) when I saw a campaign that wiffed on me so completely.

Case in point #1

Case in point #2

I mean, seriously. There's so much wrong with this, I hardly know where to start. Even by today's standards, the music sucks. The imagery is disturbing at best. I couldn't even fathom what they were going for here. I guess they're going for a cheap laugh, but it just feels creepy to me, and completely removed from what I consider to be The Ladders' brand image. If' I represent precisely the type of candidate that uses The Ladders, what does it say about me that I completely don't get this?

Then it hit me. It's got nothing to do with me. I was already using The Ladders when I saw these spots, and I'm still using The Ladders in spite of how awkward these come across. They've already got me. I'm in the boat, and now they're diving deeper to grow their customer base. I don't know who this appeals to, but it seems that The Ladders has decided to have some fun, play around a little bit (descent) in order to build their market share overall (climb).

Will it work? No idea, but I'll still keep muting my TV any time I hear that "Ooh, ah. La, la, la" intro while searching around TheLadders.com for what will hopefully be my next rung up.