The Wall Street Journal has launched a cheeky marketing campaign, using some traditional advertising channels, to recruit Canadian CEOs to join its invitation-only global CEO Council.
The “help wanted” campaign, created by The&Partnership in Canada, includes billboards and a print newspaper wrap to target a handful of CEOs in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.
The ads have been placed near the headquarters of each CEO’s company, but stop short of revealing their identity.
Instead, it uses biographical information to single them out such as “must have a proficiency in Romanian,” or “should hold a veterinary medicine degree from Belgium,” and “must have a partially completed degree from the University of British Columbia.”
It’s the first Canadian campaign The&Partnership has created since the agency became The Wall Street Journal’s global agency of record in 2014.
Ron Smrczek, executive creative director of The&Partnership Canada said the campaign was “an opportunity to create a personal message to very select, targeted people, but to also allow for a bit of public profile for The Wall Street Journal.”
The campaign is exclusively out-of-home and print. The newspaper wraps were included on select editions of The Wall Street Journal, which were handed out on the street near each targeted CEO’s office. “So far we’ve had a good, positive reaction,” says Smrczek.
The campaign started last week targeting five CEOs and two more will be targeted next week. Smrczek said the campaign could continue, depending on the success in recruiting leaders to the CEO Council.
Each CEO selected in the campaign will be contacted directly to formally invite him or her to join the CEO Council, Smrczek said.
He wouldn’t name the CEOs being targeting, noting, “part of the fun is not having a list we would call out publicly.”
The CEO Council was established in 2008 as a way to connect business leaders from around the world, “to discuss the issues shaping the future,” according to the website. It says the members lead companies in 11 countries across various industries that collectively employ more than five million people and generate over $2 trillion (U.S.) in annual revenue.
