The media planning applied many of the testing, tracking and rollout techniques outlined in The Basics of Direct Response Radio.  We used Scarborough data to identify the top 10 to 12 "IT cume" stations in any market, then Added P1 Cumes to achieve broad reach and frequency against target.  A typical 10-15 day flight produced immediate surges in local traffic, job views, resume uploads...and easily three to five months of drag. 

Our ability to predict 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  Multiple Selling Proposition 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, part of a massive global agency consortium.  Six months after EW shut down our campaign, Dice had eased back to 28,750 job listings and under $7 million in gross revenues.  In early 2003, Dice folded, then remerged under new management, and in 2006 sold for $200 million or thereabouts. 

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?