Imagine your business has some job openings and you’re not having much success filling them. The solution might be to place a ‘help wanted’ ad on TV, if you could afford it. Only TV stations have the ability to do that. They have the resources to create the ad and the air-time to show it. […]
Imagine your business has some job openings and you’re not having much success filling them. The solution might be to place a ‘help wanted’ ad on TV, if you could afford it.
Only TV stations have the ability to do that. They have the resources to create the ad and the air-time to show it.
In a recent article about Raycom Media sponsoring a college bowl game, Raycom revealed that it planned to use the game as a platform to create awareness about the company to a national audience by running recruitment ads.
After the game, the spots were delivered to each Raycom station.
“We are already airing them across Raycom,” says Susana Schuler, Raycom SVP, “given that, once Christmas shopping is done, we have avails.”
Broadcast companies are constantly looking to fill open positions at their stations. I’ve had general managers mention how hard it is to find engineers. And if you check broadcast company websites, there seems to be a lot of openings for account execs in sales. And we already know how challenging it is for station creative services directors to find staffing.
I went to a few random broadcast company websites to see how many openings there are at the moment. (These results are not intended to be scientifically accurate, just the results of a cursory view of a few broadcast website career pages.)
Raycom, for example, has 220 openings across its 53 stations. Of those, 37 were for account executives in sales, with another 26 openings posted for help in digital content or sales. There were only five openings for help in marketing. The biggest need appears to be in news, both in front of and behind the camera.
Hearst Broadcasting has more than 180 openings across its 29 stations. Of those, 14 are in marketing/promotion, 56 in sales, and again, the news department needs the most.
Gannett lists 168 openings across its 46 stations, while Media General has 170 openings across its 71 stations.
“Our goal,” says Schuler, “will be to update these. We’ve already seen a nice uptick in traffic to our career section of our website and via our LinkedIn and Raycom Facebook pages.”
I realize that some may question the wisdom of broadcasting these spots to millions of viewers when you’re trying to reach only 220 potential new employees.
Wouldn’t Raycom and other broadcast companies reach a more targeted audience by placing classified ads on industry websites like TVNewsCheck? Absolutely.
But that line of reasoning reminds me of a situation I faced at a station. Our chief meteorologist had for years conducted hurricane seminars for residents all over the area at hotels, community centers, trailer parks, schools, etc.
I decided to create a donut ad to promote each and every seminar even though many would be attended by less than 100 people. I was asked why I would waste time promoting these sparsely-attended events? My answer was that while only a few will attend the seminars, everyone will know that our meteorologist is considered an expert on hurricanes.
And that’s what I like about these ads from Raycom.
They position TV stations — Raycom stations — as upscale, exciting, technology-driven operations that are important and essential to viewers and advertisers in towns small and large.
And who wouldn’t want to be a part of that? Either working there or just watching.
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