Fiddling beaver will star in Monster's Super Bowl ad

By Johnny Diaz, Globe Staff

Monster.com will introduce a furry friend in a new national commercial that will debut Sunday in Super Bowl XLIV.

The online job search site, which has much of its operations in Maynard, will feature a fiddling beaver in a marketing campaign called "Get A Monster Advantage" to help employers and job hunters connect better.

The company cast the beaver character because it personifies industriousness and eagerness at a time when people are struggling to find a job in a down economy. (The image of the beaver that appears with this post was provided by Monster.)

Monster is the only advertiser with a local tie that plans to air a national spot in this year's Super Bowl, which will air on WBZ-TV (Channel 4). Those 30-second spots, which CBS sold out of this week, were selling between $2.5 million and $2.8 million.

"We're back in the Super Bowl because it works,'' said Ted Gilvar, executive vice president and global chief marketing officer at Monster. "We reach 100 million people with our message of innovation at the one major event where they're paying as much attention to the commercials as they are the event itself."

The beaver is the latest addition to Monster's current ad campaign. On Jan. 25, the company introduced a "Boogeyman" character looking for work after it realizes that it can no longer effectively scare kids. In that spot, the Boogeyman logs onto Monster's website and he lands a job as an accountant.

To expand on the musical beaver ad, Monster.com created a website at http://www.fiddleafriend.com/ which allow viewers to personalize their own friendly dam-building rodent in music videos and photos. "We believe the microsite provides a great way for people to engage with Monster beyond the ad itself,'' said Gilvar.

Yesterday Monster.com's parent company, Monster Worldwide Inc., released earnings and said in a press release that it has agreed to buy HotJobs, Yahoo Inc.'s online recruitment website. To read an AP story on today's Business Update about Monster, please click here.