It’s not every day that Apple TV lets brands use their storylines to make ads. Which is why when ZipRecruiter’s chief marketing officer Monika Shah got a chance to access the world of Lumon Industries – the dystopian employer from the Emmy winning show Severance – for a campaign promoting their own job search tools, it was a big win for the brand.
“We were huge fans of the show in the first season and had been talking to Apple TV for a while,” explains Shah. “The big question was if we could find creative that really worked because they’re very protective of that identity.”
It started with creative ideation, Shah explains. “We came up with four or five concepts and pitched their team. They’re very careful, so it went up the ranks of their system and their creative approvals until we found a story that we were jointly excited to tell.”
The strategy was to inhabit the world of Lumon Industries and run an ad for working there. “It is obviously a terrible workplace but we used the name to advertise how supposedly great it is to work there in a pretty tongue-in-cheek and sarcastic way that fits with our brand,” explains Shah.
Shah loves pop culture and is driving the organization’s marketing forward through integrations like this. Under her direction, ZipRecruiter cultural collaborations include partnerships with Marcus Lemonis’ FOX series, The Fixer, a collaboration with MrBeast, as well as a creative brand partnership tied to Marvel’s “Ant-Man & The Wasp.”
Shah balances embracing the cultural zeitgeist with data-driven performance marketing to help the challenger brand get attention in a category with bigger known competitors. “We’re very data-driven,” Shah says, which attracted the math major to join the brand eight years ago. “I don’t think it’s ever been more important to help people find jobs than it has been today. I feel really lucky to work at a business that impacts hundreds of millions of Americans and beyond,” she adds.
Prior to joining ZipRecruiter, Shah was vice president of marketing at Million Dollar Baby. She has also held roles at Bain & Company, Warby Parker and Acumen. Brand Innovators caught up with Shah from her office in Los Angeles to talk about integrating with Apple TV, working with Apple TV and Marvel. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How are you thinking about showing up as a brand?
It’s really two parts. We’re a performance marketing-focused company. That value proposition and story of how we make things better for job seekers and businesses looking to hire are really important. But because we’re a challenger, ZipRecruiter has always had this irreverent, fast, fun brand. We’ve given ourselves a lot of leeway in terms of how we tell that story whether it’s partnering with Apple TV on “Severance,” which is a show about how terrible jobs are or with folks who are really up-and-coming like MrBeast, we’ve been able to take that story and put it into places that are fresh and fun for our audience.
How did your partnership with MrBeast come about?
We were excited by his audience and the enormous traction that he was having. We also found that he’s really willing to partner on telling a story that’s interesting. For example, one of the features that we did is, they’re all up in a plane and they get on a candidate interview from there. He was super willing to showcase our product and tell our story but in a way where you almost can’t look away because what’s happening is so surprising and unexpected.
What about your partnership with Marvel and Ant-Man and the Wasp?
That was a similar example where we were able to find a story that both sides were so excited to tell. It opens in the world of Ant-Man and the first thing you see when you come in are these giant ants that are waist high. We wanted to make sure to speak both to the fans with some Easter eggs, as well as to speak to a general audience because that was running on broad TV. It wasn’t an integration. It started with that and then it was really about hiring for it’s called Pym Van Dyne – the company that they’re focused on in Ant-Man. From there on, it’s really all about how ZipRecruiter helps you hire fast and from there. Again, it takes place in this world where an employee there is talking to you about ZipRecruiter the entire time.
Can you talk about why showing up in these places makes sense for your brand?
It is really important to us to show up where consumers are. One of the things that’s fun about ZipRecruiter is our consumers are almost everyone, all adults. It’s actually really great for us as a marketing team because it’s rare that there’s a property that is not worth at least taking a look at. What really matters is partnering with the talent themselves. It mattered to us for “Severance” that we could use original clips from the TV show. It mattered to us for Ant-Man. It wasn’t actually Paul Rudd, but we used someone in the Ant-Man suit. I think a willingness to share our partner’s core characters and places to garner interest really matters to us because we want to show up with audiences in places that they love. We just did a big partnership with Tom Brady for his YouTube show. He has a very loyal fan base, which makes it a great place for us.
Can you talk a little bit about your podcasting strategy?
We were also early and heavy in podcast advertising, we understood the power of that very early. ZipRecruiter has been heavily invested in podcasts from day one. We really focus on places where the audience is hearing directly from the person that they’re there to listen to, be that Trevor Noah or Joe Rogan. Our strategy is really focused on making sure that these people are talking about ZipRecruiter in a way that’s authentic and fun and engaging.
There is uncertainty in the marketplace this year. How does that impact your brand?
As a marketer, how are you communicating to your audiences in this marketplace? I think that data-driven culture is one of the things that makes my job so wonderful is it’s created really clear alignment with finance and leadership and the board is we don’t have, as much back and forth as I’ve seen elsewhere because we have alignment on what numbers we’re going to look at and how we’re going to rate success.
We are as loud in the marketplace as we’ve been. What’s important to us is continuing to make sure that job seekers know that we’re here as a better way to find a job and that we are showing up in those places with kind of relevance and heart and authenticity.
What are some of the key marketing trends on your mind as we head into the second half of the year?
I’m really inspired by creators, so that is very top of mind for us. We’re working with them in all kinds of different ways and getting creative with cross- channel partnerships and creator competitions.
Every marketer out there is thinking about AI and whether that’s using AI in bidding or creative. We’ve always had a truth in our business, which is that we serve the U.S. labor market. And yet it’s important for us as a brand to stay personal for people to know that we can help job seekers like them and businesses like them. AI has really helped us do that lately.
Can you tell me about how your background has helped you in your current role?
I came from a highly quant background in math and then I have a background in strategy consulting and I did a lot of investing. I think that’s really helped my partnership with our general C-suite and especially with our finance team. I also came from a consumer and I’ve always loved culture and social media. In my last role, I was the head of marketing for a consumer company in the baby space. When Kim Kardashian and Kanye West did their Vogue spread and launched Baby North to the world, behind them was our $5,000 Lucite crib. That’s helped make me brave in some ways and excited to really partner with culture with prominent figures in culture and stay relevant.
