On January 4, 1999, four "Click the Dice" radio spots for a five year-old IT job board debuted in Boston, Atlanta, Denver, Seattle and on Rush Limbaugh nationwide.

Eighteen months, 22 markets, five radio networks, and 11 cablenets later, Dice's job listings had grown from 70,000 to 243,000; weekly clicks were up from 125,000 to 1.5 million; and 128,000 extra IT pros had landed new jobs - earning recruiters an extra $1.2 billion in commissions.  Dice.com's revenues surged from $14 to $40 million.

What massive global agency consortium engineered that spectacular ad campaign?  Actually, my business manager Thursday Savage and I pulled it off pretty much on our own.

The media planning applied many of the testing, tracking and rollout techniques outlined on the Direct Response Radio Math page.  We used Scarborough data to identify the top 10 to 12 "IT cume" stations in 22 markets, then bought just enough advertising to reach 80% of TA about 2.5 times over 10 to 15 days.

Since IT contractors look for new gigs every six months, we ran our spot market OEF flights every three months. A typical flight produced immediate surges in local traffic, job views, resume uploads...and easily three to five months of drag, which we also supported with a modest EF 1.0/Month presence in network.

Our ability to predict Active Shopper response helped Dice's sales force in Des Moines pre-sell hundreds of subscriptions to local recruiters and HR managers.  The pay-as-you-go radio media budget became a profit center!

I also refined and perfected my Real People Radio interviewing & editing techniques to produce over 40 testimonial spots.  The key objectives were first to  defuse the emotional reluctance of many engineers to seek higher paying jobs and then to encourage IT pros to use the site to manage their careers, i.e. to determine the market value of learning another programming language or skill.

After a year of spot and network radio, we added cable TV including two campaigns for dice's New York parent company, EarthWeb a portal for 20 or so IT sites and e-zines.  We had just begun a Sales Training Program when the aftershock of the Dot Bust bankrupted EarthWeb.  Management consolidated all EW and Dice advertising at Hill Holliday, an Interpublic agency,   just across Park Avenue South.

Six months later Dice was off the air and back in the back of Dr. Dobbs and PC Week. Job listings dropped quickly to 28,750. Annual revenues dropped to $7 million, i.e. where I came in.  In early 2003, Dice folded, then remerged under new management, and in 2006 sold for $200 million or thereabouts.

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Atlanta Intro
Job Deluge Denver
Job Search Boston
Announce Availability Seattle

Forrest P is on Vibrate
Olivia v The Pharaohs
Chris P Lands at Cisco
Monica D Got 150 Offers
John B's Cell Phone Bill
These Girls Are Geeks
Luke & Meg On Top
Chris S Doubles his Pay
What Are the Hot IT Trends?
Josette adds PMI to MSCE
Meg Flies to NYC
Ralph P Recruits in Chi
Jack K Recruits in Iselin NJ
These PMs Use Dice Daily

I personally do not speak or write C++, Perl, Sed, Awk or Grep. I have no clue what a LAN Manager or Systems Engineer really does.

Despite my lack of relevant experience, though, I did guide Dice into the #2 spot in the entire IT job category, second only to Monster, which outspent us 20:1.

What cluttered category do you compete in?