Building an Award-Winning Digital Campaign For Cat Recruiting with Mike Rowe

organization
Capabilities
Timing

2013 - 2015

Situation


The year was 2013. Manufacturers around the globe faced a massive shortage of skilled trade technicians. So was the company that I worked with. With more than 3 million pieces of equipment around the world and not enough technicians to service them, a recruitment program was implemented to address the skilled labor shortage and find qualified candidates to fill the talent pipeline.

GOALS

  • Identify work-ready leads
  • Expand the hiring pool for future techs by inspiring students to consider careers in skilled trades
  • Change the generally negative perception of the trades

Actions

As a communication and digital strategist for this program, I developed an integrated marketing campaign that leveraged the digital space as a tool to generate awareness, educate, and recruit qualified technicians and their influencers. My objective was to bolster recruiting leads in real-time while simultaneously laying the groundwork for enhanced digital-recruiting capabilities in the future.

Digital Strategy

Leveraging the star power of Mike Rowe, the campaign targeted content for each audience type across the following channels.

Media

  • Paid media – Banner ads, Paid search video
  • Social
  • Traditional – Television – CNN show, Radio
  • Tradeshow – Skills USA

Website

  • Book Website
  • Technician recruiting lead generation page
  • Landing pages on Mike Rowe’s website

Lead generation

  • Lead capture forms
  • Dealer follow-up

Assets

LANDING PAGE

SOCIAL VIDEO

LANDING PAGE

TECHNICIAN VIDEOS 2

TECHNICIAN VIDEOS 3

PRINT AD 1

PRINT AD 2

PRINT AD 3

BOOK FRONT

BOOK BACK

Results


Success

The campaign was a success. It brought in qualified, work-ready leads, ready to join the Cat workforce.

Here were the following results from mid-2013 to the end of the year:

  • Average daily leads increased by 290%
  • Web traffic for pages related to Technician recruitment increased by 209%
  • 64% of leads were identified as “work-ready”
  • 91% of work-ready leads were looking for a job within the next six months
  • 41% of work-ready leads had five or more years of experience
  • 95% of non-work-ready leads were students interested in pursuing a career in the skilled trades
  • The campaign press coverage sparked a national conversation around the importance of skilled trades.

More details here: https://www.simantel.com/cat-wants-you/

Awards

Additionally, this campaign won several awards including the Ad Age B2B small campaign of the year award.

More details here: https://adage.com/article/special-report-small-agency-conference-and-awards/small-agency-b-b-campaign-year-gold-simantel/294248

organization

Capabilities

Timing

2013 - 2015

SITUATION

ACTION

RESULTS

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