ZipRecruiter launched a 360 sports marketing campaign spanning TV, audio, direct mail, owned and paid social, in-arena LED, and billboards. Creative had to be versioned for several partnerships: NCAA Division 1 universities, NCAA conferences, NHL teams and the NHL.
I was stoked to be tapped to art direct the biggest creative campaign in the history of the company and work with (and learn from) some heavy-hitting freelancers to bring it to life.
Design collateral that is authentic to...
After two years the campaign had raised aided awareness by X% and unaided awareness... Given the added cost of the partnerships we decided to sunset sports marketing because our cost per lead for sports wasn’t any better for sports than it was for our core brqand marketing.
Direct mail was the core of the campaign. We pumped out as many as 23 new sports mailers per month on top of our brand mail pieces. We focused on designing mail with heavy team branding—or that conjured pride for the community—because we were sending to business addresses and expected this audience to be mostly casual fans or people just trying to run their businesses.
All spots were versioned for national and local networks in the US and Canada. Our media team did an excellent job securing remnant media that gave us outsized ROI like the World Series and other live sporting events. I art directed and versioned the set design of the sports memorabilia in the bar for the shoot, and I illustrated and art directed the product animations and motion graphics for all the TV spots. I also led creative versioning which meant being super organized in partnership with our producers and getting into After Effects on occasion.
Designers: Erik Arildsson, Christina Van Lepp
Copywriter: Kate Seldman
Front End Partners: Weston Radcliffe, Jeff Wei, Gaby Dilley
Creative Ops: Jenn Yang