Steve Paton
Art director
Phones 4 U
In April this year, the client approached Stafford Long, with an interest in developing an employer brand. Without any research to base it on, I examined the consumer brand to see if there was any overlap. P4U claims to be a fun place to work, offering career progression to ambitious sales-minded people, particularly in their stores. Their consumer brand is aiming at the younger end of the mobile market (16-25), so their advertising has tended to select that. Irreverent, quirky and not afraid to 'take the mickey', it was an interesting challenge. Social media-wise, it was also a ripe opportunity to demonstrate how we could exploit this for recruitment, engage with such a media-savvy target audience, and communicate the fun and career prospects P4U could offer. We deliberately showed them a wide range of ideas, targeted at a generic level, store-in store recruitment, and high street sales roles. Here's a small selection of the work I presented.Store-in-store recruitment
P4U had expanded their retail presence by taking space in larger Currys stores. But the selling environment was quite different from the high street, with customers more interested in fridge freezers than a mobile phone. Using video, online media, social networking sites, we invited potential candidates to see if they could do better the dodgy sales tactics in our audition videos. People were encouraged to post their own 'sales pitch' online, where people could vote for their favourites. This was also supported by giving people the opportunity to nominate their Facebook friends, if they thought it was the kind of work that would suit them.
banner
You tube page
Instore posters/press
Facebook sharing
Generic recruitment
Great training, great rewards, and proper recognition were just three aspects of what P4U offered its staff. So we showed them how these could be communicated using new media. Consumer-wise they had already successfully exploited social media with the'Are you popular enough?' campaign, where you could 'stamp' a friend's profile with 'yes' or 'no'. We suggested emulating this, with the sort of reward no one would be very happy with.
'Send to a friend' Facebook initiative
Interactive banners
P4U have a state-of-the-art training academy, online training hub, and individually tailored development programmes for all staff. So we showed them how this could be communicated using online rich media. Using interactive banners, people were encouraged to 'wake up' the trainee by giving him a nudge. Once they'd achieved that, he woke and moved to the adjacent store environment, where a short video was playable with him expounding the virtues of training at P4U. Candidates could then visit the P4U careers site to explore further.
Instore posters/press
ERP
Fitting neatly with the fun side of P4U, an employee referral programme using mobile. Having promoted download of an app, employees could upload a picture of someone they thought could prove an asset to P4U. They could then paste their friend's image into one of a selection on monkey faces, and send it to them, asa light=hearted way of introducing them to the company.
