Fired for Now: Getting fired, laid off, and hired again

If you watched the Golden Globe Awards last weekend, you may have seen a new Monster.com commercial. It’s part of a just-launched ad campaign accompanying the launch of Monster’s rebuilt web site. And according to the ad agency behind it, (BBDO New York), in the face of massive layoffs, people just want to laugh. (You can watch it here at nytimes.com.)

Now, that could be true. Attendance at movies is up as it was during the Great Depression. Yes, we want an escape from the unrelenting bad news.

But these commercials are just wrong. The problem isn’t that they’re humorous, which the CEO of BBDO NY seemed to be defending in yesterday’s New York Times article.

It’s that the humor fails to capture any insight of the particular times we’re living through right now. In fact, it seems entirely divorced from the whole proceedings.

In one television spot, a construction worker clings to a beam, crying and whimpering. The camera then pulls back to reveal that he is only a few feet off the ground.

In another, an ambulance arrives at the scene of an accident and when the emergency medical technicians jump out, one of them faints.

Both spots end with the super: “Are you in the right job?”

Okay, I get it. Maybe we’re missed our calling and monster.com is there to help us find the light.

But c’mon Monster. What a missed opportunity. The current lighthearted aspirational message belongs in a time of relative prosperity when people feel the freedom to question what they really want. When they have the freedom to dream. Right now, people are simply thankful for what they’ve got.

Remember Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? The most basic of the five levels are physiological and safety. Once these are met – when we’re secure that our basic needs are being met — individuals are able to move into self-actualization at the top of the hierarchy. The idea here is that we can’t embrace ideas of self-actualization (of finding the perfect job) when we feel our safety is threatened.

The advertising territory here is rich. And no, it doesn’t have to be heavy-handed or somber. It simply has to resonate with what people are feeling now. That applies to being funny too.

Now, remember the monster.com commercial from 1999, “When I grow up”? (Watch it here.)

In the award-winning ad, a number of children face the camera in succession saying what they want to be when they grow up. Instead of saying the expected “I want to be a fireman, an athlete, a movie star”, they say, “I want to be a brown noser, I want to be underappreciated, I want to be forced into early retirement.”

This ad was simple, intelligent, incredibly memorable – and funny. And the tone and message of this 10-year-old commercial resonates with the mood of today’s workforce far more than the new ads you’ll be seeing. Although a decade old, its humor captures the disappointment and hurt that so many are experiencing right now while at the same time providing a sense of inspiration and motivation. On the other hand, the current ads are simple-minded, not just simple, and instead play like a sophomoric SNL skit compared to the insight and intelligent humor of the decade-old spot.

Monster would do better to pull the older commercials out of the vault and run them again – or at least use them as the starting place to create ads that have a semblance of resonating with today’s zeitgeist. We’ll see how the campaign rolls out for the monster of all advertising days during the Superbowl.