{"id":569328,"date":"2010-05-18T22:34:04","date_gmt":"2010-05-19T02:34:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kempton.wordpress.com\/?p=11036"},"modified":"2010-05-18T22:34:04","modified_gmt":"2010-05-19T02:34:04","slug":"how-to-get-ahead-in-advertising-with-six-dollars-and-google","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/569328","title":{"rendered":"How to get ahead in advertising with six dollars and Google"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Love the following article and idea.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

How to get ahead in advertising with six dollars and Google<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

When top creative directors Googled themselves, they got a shock: a witty message from copywriter Alec Brownstein, searching for a job<\/p>\n

Dave McGinn
\nFrom Tuesday’s Globe and Mail
\nPublished on Tuesday, May. 18, 2010 10:04AM EDT<\/p>\n

Alec Brownstein landed his dream job with creativity and $6. And the Google Job Experiment, as he calls it, has made the 29-year-old advertising copywriter the most famous job seeker of the moment.<\/p>\n

Already working as a copywriter, but looking to move up in the world, Mr. Brownstein went on to Google AdWords and bought the names of five of the top creative directors at ad agencies in New York. Whenever one of those people Googled themselves, they found a link to Mr. Brownstein\u2019s website, alecbrownstein.com, and this message: \u201cHey [creative director\u2019s name]: Googling yourself is a lot of fun. Hiring me is fun, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bold move landed Mr. Brownstein calls from all but one of the creative directors, two advertising awards and, most importantly, two job offers, one of which he accepted. He\u2019s now a senior copywriter at Young & Rubicam.<\/p>\n

Mr. Brownstein and his boss, Scott Vitrone, spoke to The Globe and Mail.<\/p>\n

Alec, where did you get the idea for this from?<\/p>\n

Alec Brownstein: As someone who Googles myself on occasion, I realized that if someone were to put a message to me in the sponsored result in the top hit, I would take notice of that. So that\u2019s what I did.<\/p>\n

How much did the whole thing cost?<\/p>\n

<\/span>AB: Google AdWords is a sort of bidding system. So if want to take out an ad and get the top spot for something like \u201cpharmacy\u201d or \u201cdoctor\u201d or \u201clawyer,\u201d you\u2019ve got to pay a lot for that top spot. But when you\u2019re dealing with something that\u2019s a bit more abstract that a lot of people aren\u2019t bidding, like a name … if nobody else is bidding, you can get the top spot for about 15 cents a click, and that\u2019s what I did.<\/p>\n

Scott, how did you come across the ad?<\/p>\n

Scott Vitrone: My partner, Ian Reichenthal, and I got a call from a friend who works in the industry. He said, \u201cHave you guys Googled yourselves recently?\u201d And we were like, \u201cNo.\u201d And he said, \u201cWell you should check it out because I think there\u2019s someone out there who\u2019s trying to talk to you.\u201d So we did, and obviously Alec\u2019s ad came up. We thought it was just beautifully simple. So we called him up and brought him in for an interview.<\/p>\n

Alec, why did you write the ad the way you did?<\/p>\n

AB: I wanted it to be relevant to what the occasion was. I was assuming the occasion was they were Googling themselves. So I kind of wanted them to know, hey, I Google myself too, and that\u2019s an okay thing.<\/p>\n

Did you ever worry this would freak out the creative directors you were going after?<\/p>\n

AB: There\u2019s a fine line between flattery and creepiness and stalking. I put it out there, I figured if they were the type of people who I wanted to work for, who I thought did the type of work I loved, that they might find it kind of cheeky as opposed to creepy.<\/p>\n

Scott, at the very least you must have been intrigued?<\/p>\n

SV: That\u2019s exactly how we took it. We thought it was fun. We thought it was smart. The biggest thing was, Alec on his part did what we try to do for our clients every day. We\u2019re trying to engage the consumer in that very way. He was really kind of displaying what we want our people to do here every day.<\/p>\n

And obviously Alec had a solid resume. He didn\u2019t just get the job because of the gimmick.<\/p>\n

SV: Definitely. That got him in the door, and Alec had the work to back up the Google ad.<\/p>\n

Alec, your co-workers must know how you got your foot in the door. How has it gone over in the office?<\/p>\n

AB: I think when they first heard about what I did they thought it was pretty clever. But now that it\u2019s sort of been getting some press they\u2019re probably pretty sick of it.<\/p>\n

What advice do you have for people out there looking for a job?<\/p>\n

AB: My advice is to be targeted, to decide who you want to work for and where you want to work, and then don\u2019t be afraid to put yourself out there in an interesting way to communicate with those people and with that place. Because it\u2019s not like they can fire you. You don\u2019t work for them yet.<\/p>\n

Filed under: advertising<\/a>, Business<\/a>, Google<\/a>, people<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Love the following article and idea. How to get ahead in advertising with six dollars and Google When top creative directors Googled themselves, they got a shock: a witty message from copywriter Alec Brownstein, searching for a job Dave McGinn From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail Published on Tuesday, May. 18, 2010 10:04AM EDT Alec Brownstein […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":841,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-569328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/841"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569328\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}