Barbara Lippert's Critique: Walking Tall

Jobs.com suggests you get a life The TV spots for Jobs.com are exhilarating, considering they're built around some vaguely recognizable man talking. The guy in the raincoat is Tom Peters--and this isn't any ordinary blab. The †ber-guru of postmodern management, he is the oracle of the reinvention of the white-collar workplace and author of the early '80s bestseller The Search for Excellence. Peters doesn't actually talk: He shouts, he excoriates, he admonishes. His trademark? Exclamation! As in his latest manifesto, The Work Matters!, Peters does have a singular style, and something to say about movin' on up out of Dilbertland and becoming the master of your own brand. His seminal piece, "The Brand Called You,'' published in Fast Company in 1997, posited the need for everybody to become a brand. (Think Martha Stewart.) "One key to growing your power,'' he wrote, "is to recognize the simple fact that we now live in a project world. A project-based world is ideal for growing your brand: projects exist around deliverables, they create measurables, and they leave you with braggables.'' And this Jobs.com campaign does a great job of boxing up and delivering the Peters brand. But does that necessarily translate to measurables and braggables for Jobs.com? Let's go to the videotape. Speaking of boxing up, in the first spot, Peters actually stands inside a coffinlike plain pine box, placed vertically on a busy city street. He stands there like the Dracula of the new economy preaching change. Apparently, Peters' language tends toward the salty, and that has been translated for network television with the all-purpose "bleepin.'' As in, "If you're not happy with your bleepin' job, then do us a bleepin' favor,'' he says. Any speech punctuated with "bleepin'" takes on its own interesting rhythm. Meanwhile, we see quick cuts of a meter maid at work and the grim faces of the busy passersby. The cuts are masterly and speak volumes. "Change your bleepin' life,'' he says. "We are only here for a short while, and then we are gone for a long bleepin' time.'' There's a lot of life and death stuff here to turn you from a passive job seeker to an active one. Another spot takes place in the woods, (To suggest Blair Witch? Seeing the forest for the trees? Or the Robert Frost poem that Monster.com already uses?) Here the trees are marked for destruction, and that's a metaphor for what's going to happen to 90 percent of white-collar job holders in the next 10 years. In between fulminations, we get shots of a dead bug on its back. A third spot takes place in a cemetary. The fourth ad leaves death for gender territory: "This ladies and gentlemen, is our new hero: Icon Woman," says Peters. "She is totally turned on by her work. Work matters. She is CEO of her own life. She is determined to make a difference. And she will not stay unless she can make a difference.'' We see a very attractive young Asian woman packing up her cubicle and walking with her box to the elevator. She is the fearless New Paradigm Babe. (Is part of the paradigm to go braless?) Icon Woman rewrites the famous Clairol manifesto, from "If I only have one life, let me live it as a blonde!'' to "If I only have one life to live, let me out of this cubicle!'' Shots of Icon Babe are intercut with Peters in an office setting breaking giant balloons. It's a mixed bursting-your-bubble metaphor that doesn't track, but I like the spot. The campaign is brilliantly shot, scored and edited. The spots stand out in a sea of dot-coms, and probably will do as much for jobs.com as they do for Peters. That's doubling the braggables, if you're into measurables. K Jobs.com Agency: rizzuti.com, Addison, Texas Creative Director: Guy Lyman Copywriter: Dean Noble Art Director: David Jenkins Producer: Will McDonald Director: Kevin Kerslake Production Co.: Gigantic Films, Beverly Hills, Calif

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Barbara Lippert's Critique: Walking Tall

Barbara Lippert

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Barbara Lippert