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Client: Atlas
Creative Agency: Wexley School for Girls; Seven2 Interactive

Headquartered in Seattle, WA, Atlas, an upstart subsidiary of aQuantive, approached Wexley School for Girls to help address two specific needs: increase general public awareness in Seattle and promote employment opportunities to local and regional techies. The campaign needed to achieve significant impressions both off and online and also drive qualified prospective employees to workforatlas.com, where they could gain insight into the positive work/life-balanced culture and open positions. 

Wexley and Seven/2, Wexley's interactive partner on the project, set out to create an informative and engaging microsite for Atlas that would be effective in showcasing Atlas's culture. The solution needed to be equal parts entertaining and enlightening, while representing the high integrity brand of Atlas. We knew that featuring a game, especially one where the player can enjoy a cathartic release, would be a smart tactic.

After a few rounds of informal focus groups with local techies (including many Atlas staff), we then concepted a solution that would engage visitors for three to five minutes and have a return enticement (the game and associated contests). As we were building the game, it became apparent that we had done a good job creating a quality game experience. This led us to seed the final game on viral flash sites like stupidvideos.com and flashradium.com. To date, more than 45,000 game plays have occurred.

The client was ecstatic. The campaign was featured in Business 2.0 and local media, and with more than 45,000 game plays and an equivalent number of unique visitors to the microsite, Atlas was very pleased with the high number of impressions generated. Coupled with the offline promotion, the campaign to date has yielded more than 1 million impressions. 

With basically zero budget for viral seeding, we were able to garner 45,000 game plays by sending it out to a handful of flash game sites. In the end, Atlas received dozens of quality resumes from prospective job candidates and generated great PR from this effort.
-- Chris Lohman, account supervisor/director of production, Wexley School for Girls

An enjoyable and indeed cathartic game is the centerpiece of a neatly-designed site that portrays Atlas as a nice place to work. Go ahead and play the game (I got to round three, but then the man opened up a cyber-can of whupass on me), but don't miss the site components surrounding the game: the 10 reasons to consider looking for a new job, the employee testimonials, videos and clearly usable newsletter signup field. Of course, regardless of impression level and PR, the purpose of the site was to get qualified people to apply at Atlas, so the "dozens of quality resumes from prospective job candidates" the company received makes the best index of the site's success. One quibble: why was the "send to a friend" functionality restricted to the game page? The whole site deserved a passalong component.
-- Brad Berens, executive editor, iMedia

For what this is -- a recruitment piece -- this job site is definitely attention-getting. And I suppose that’s half the battle with all the congestion and competition online today. The layout is nice, if not a little A.D.D. The game is pretty funny (I beat the man in just over a minute, for all of you type A personalities out there).

My only concern is that while the game prominently features the tag line “Beat the Man Down,” the rest of the site is about joining this huge tech company, which presumably could be run by another “the man.” I think that point needs to have been made clearer-- just a positioning thing. Otherwise, I like the different things you can do on this microsite-- games, text, frivolous top 10 lists, videos, candids.  A solid effort here.
-- Matt Wright, director, online video strategy, HowStuffWorks