HARD ROCK is HARD WORK
Each Labor Day, Carhartt donates 100% of online sales to a charity dedicated to helping close the skilled trade gap in America. This year, that partner was Metallica’s All Within My Hands organization, who work with community colleges to connect young people to the trades.
In the past, the way you found those jobs was the classifieds. It’s even how Metallica got started 40 years ago. So we decided to take a page out of the band’s playbook to create a one-of-a-kind experience for five lucky job seekers and raise a hell of a lot of money for AWMH in the process.
This video was the main piece of content used to pitch the project to media and promote the partnership online. I had to wear many hats on this project, including writing the script for James, supervising the music and editing for the video, directing the B-roll shoot, and much, much more. I can attest that hard rock (and a campaign about it) really is hard work.
To keep things in the spirit of the original ad, we placed classifieds in major newspapers throughout the South and the Midwest. But most young people aren’t looking for jobs in the newspaper, so we also created digital placements on job boards and these Craigslist postings, which ended up generating the most hits of any of the placements.
In addition to newspaper and online placements, we also placed these flyers in high traffic areas near bars, venues, and college campuses.
When respondents called the number on the ad, they received this recording from none other than Metallica frontman James Hetfield. The message explained the program and directed callers to our Hard Rock is Hard Work intake site. Five respondents were then vetted and chosen for our workshop at Upstaging, which helped us create the video seen above.
Before the project launched nationally, we cut together this quick, high energy asset to tease the partnership with Metallica. The video generated over 23K views in two days. Makes sure you watch this one with the sound ON.
Once the project was live, this image was shared with media to help promote coverage.
A collection of assets including our recreated version of the original 1981 classified ad (the original is lost to time), behind the scenes photos from the workshop, mockups of the jackets we gave away to participants, and practically created and shot partner logos.
CREDITS
Creative Director / Music Supervisor - G. Brett Williams
Senior Art Director - Kayla Ducklo
Lead Producer - Rob Gilcrest
Lead Video Producer / Edit - Justin Capadocia
Assistant Editor - Miseth Luna
Executive Creative Director - Jeremy Bersano
Production Support - Knack Factory