- (Image: myhusbandneedsajob.com)
During these bad economic times, a lot of people have been doing everything they can to find a job. Sometimes it takes the power of two to do so. After Michael Stearns got his MBA from Georgetown and came to California, he had been struggling to find a job for 8 months. His wife then decides to take matters into her own hands and created myhusbandneedsajob.com. Myhusbandneedsajob.com is simply a promotional site that sells one product: her husband.
Myhusbandneedsajob.com as creative buzz
Notice that when the wife decided to help her husband, she did not create a site that just talks about Mike. She purposely added herself into the picture by calling it myhusbandneedsajob.com instead of just hiremike.com or something related. The first page of it is just her holding a big sign that says “Hire My Husband”.
This is actually really smart because there are millions of people trying to find a job for themselves, and it does not stand out. However, not that many sites are created to promote someone else, especially a spouse. myhusbandneedsajob.com is a catchy idea because women will look at it and respect how she is being so supportive of her spouse, while men out there will all tell their wives about it.
In essence, myhusbandneedsajob.com perfectly fits in the 6 concepts of Made to Stick(an awesome book that’s worth a read): Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotional, and Stories. As you can see, myhusbandneedsajob.com is a simple and emotional story that qualifies for a viral campaign.
Slight problems with myhusbandneedsajob.com
Even though myhusbandneedsajob.com is a brilliant marketing plot, it still has some problems. One very obviously problem is that if you tried to type in myhusbandneedsajob.com into your url bar, it will simply take you to a spammy godaddy page. You actually have to go to http://www.myhusbandneedsajob.com/myhusbandneedsajob/Welcome.html to see the content, which means the site is not set up well for direct traffic. Millions of people can hear about myhusbandneedsajob.com and never find it. That’s like saying “in order to go on myspace.com, you need to type in myspace.com/homepage.php”. Very few people will do that.
Another problem is the negative association that people may get when they see such a site. Employers will all know that Mike was not able to find a job for 8 months, despite full-time job seeking efforts. Some of them may feel “there must be something wrong with him.” If it was just a normal interview, Mike’s strengths would be highlight. But under this setting, his struggles are highlighted and it would almost seem like a sympathy hire.
I feel like the company would just rather hire the wife instead for the smart marketing move. Also, myhusbandneedsajob.com may be embarrassing to Mike in the sense that he couldn’t find a job himself and needed to rely on his wife. This may affect some of the employers too.
Why myhusbandneedsajob.com will work
The reason why I think myhusbandneedsajob.com will work is because of the publicity. I already said that it upholds to all Made to Stick requirements, and it will become well-known. This becomes quite useful for companies in terms of marketing and branding. In essence, they won’t be hiring Mike for his unique abilities (obviously that counts too), but they will hire him to get good publicity by being the company that hires Mike from myhusbandneedsajob.com.
This is like during the older days of eBay, this online casino website would constantly buy the dumbest things for a ridiculous high price, like “magic biscuit for $2000”, “empty folder for $200”. They did it not because they are stupid or value the goods. Its because spending $6000 buying a broken time machine is a great way to get people to find out about them. In the same reason, myhusbandneedsajob.com will probably become successful and accomplish its goals of getting Mike hired.
Further Development of myhusbandneedsajob.com
I actually think that perhaps Mike doesn’t even need to find a job. After a successful traffic pump, the couple could actually convert the entire site into a web community where people promote their spouses in hopes of finding a job. Most of the time building a site is not the biggest challenge. Its getting the publicity. If they have already gotten that publicity, then making a site that makes ad revenue would generate some money for them. Although I’m not entirely convinced that this concept is sustainable in the longrun (probably more of a support group then a real “find a good job place”), I dont think good traffic and publicity should be wasted. What do you guys think about the potentials of myhusbandneedsajob.com in that light?
