(a) Brand identity

Whatever creative ideas you're planning to deliver, you first need to establish a consistent brand ‘look and feel’. It may be that this is already established and prescribed by the corporate brand guidelines, or it may be that you have scope to tailor the ‘look and feel’ to the employer brand, or a specific campaign to a specific audience. Either way, this should ensure:

• your brand stands out from your competitors;
• your marketing materials look and feel attractive to your primary target audiences;
• your target audience correctly associates your marketing content with your brand;
• your employer brand aligns effectively with your corporate and customer brands.

(b) Core creative concept/brand mantra

Many of the world's strongest brands develop a strong central idea, generally expressed in a memorable tagline, that serves to provide thematic consistency and continuity across their many different streams of brand communication. Ideally, this should help you:

• attract people's attention and prompt them to find out more;
• translate your core positioning into a clear commitment, statement of belief or call to action;
• inspire a rich variety of potential avenues for creative expression and execution.

Classic examples in the world of corporate and consumer branding include HSBC (‘The World's Local Bank’), AVIS (‘We Try Harder’), NIKE (‘Just Do It’) and L'Oréal (‘Because You're Worth It’). It doesn't necessarily need to be a radical idea, but it does need to carry significant conviction, and you need to be able to demonstrate it in spades. There are very many also-rans in this category of creative endeavour. Taglines are ten a penny. It's not the line that wins you fans but the imagination and commitment you display driving home your creative idea through the full spectrum of content formats and marketing activities at your disposal.

TMP Worldwide Creative Director, Jamie Haskayne, says:

‘In a world where content is king and engagement is a long-term aim, having a strong central theme, concept, world view and tone of voice is more important than ever before. Content takes us in so many different directions – developing all kinds of relatively self-contained creative assets from games, quizzes and discussions to experiences and films. That ever-expanding universe of creative opportunities works best when it revolves around a single, powerful idea. And, though it may be counter-intuitive, that sharper focus also gives you more creative freedom. A big idea allows us to create a strong narrative for social storytelling and gives people a feel for the employer brand whichever way they come into contact with it.’

(c) Campaign ideas and executional structure

Having a core creative concept is one thing, executing it is another. The big idea tends to be big because they are broad. The sharpest and most impactful creative ideas tend to be either campaign ideas or the ideas for individual executions. For example, one of my favourite TV adverts of all time featured a young man motorcycling around South America. He makes the OK sign everywhere he goes and it's OK, except in Brazil where it means ‘screw you’. The music stops and he leaves the bar in a hurry to the overdub ‘we never underestimate the importance of local knowledge, HSBC, the World's Local Bank’. If you weren't moved by the core brand idea ‘World's Local Bank’, or unsure how creative the ‘Cultural Collision’ idea was for this particular campaign, then hopefully this executional idea will finally rock your boat.

The most effective campaigns can be executed in many different ways, but most work within a consistent structure giving a shape to the idea so that it can be replicated in different forms. Working within these structures enables you to maintain consistency, while still providing scope to:

• generate multiple executions;
• translate your brand messages to different audiences;
• refresh your brand messages over time;
• adapt to different marketing media and channels.

In print format, ‘The World's Local Bank’ used the juxtaposition of images to structure its campaign messages. The first campaign stressed ‘the importance of local knowledge’ by showing different cultural interpretations of the same idea, for example, the different meanings of football in the USA, UK and Australia. The next campaign stressed different ‘points of view’, the same image, for example a picture of a car, accompanied by three different descriptions: ‘freedom’, ‘status symbol’ and ‘polluter’. The accompanying copy read: ‘The more you look at the world, the more you recognize that people value the same things but in different ways.’ If you travel much, you will have seen literally hundreds of variations applying this same basic structure, keeping it fresh over many years, while still maintaining a basic level of brand consistency that makes an HSBC ad instantly recognizable (Figure 12.1).

Executional ideas should not be limited to advertising, nor necessarily constrained by a campaign structure. Much of the focus in brand communication is shifting towards ‘content marketing’, where a much wider variety of communication formats can be creatively exploited to get your message across or simply engage the attention of your core target audiences. However, the creative development work described above still remains important. You still need strong ideas to grab people's attention and you still need a consistent framework to ensure these ideas build lasting associations with your brand.

(a) Establishing the wider creative context for your employer brand

What corporate brand parameters does your employer brand identity need to work within (in terms of logo usage, font, pantones, graphic elements and imagery)? How much scope is there for extending and tailoring these identity guidelines to the more specific needs of the employer brand, current and potential employees?

What, if any, customer or consumer brand communication exists? Does it include an employee perspective, either through explicit reference to employees, or messages that imply a particular style of employment? Might it be possible to apply a similar creative approach to your employer brand marketing?

What can be learnt from current recruitment campaign materials? What has proved to be most and least effective in terms of audience engagement?

What internal communication channels and campaigns have recently featured, or continue to feature, some form of branding (internal logos, taglines and design style)? Which brand elements appear to have been most and least effective in terms of audience engagement?

What can be learnt from the above that could be applied to the employer branding? For example, what potential is there to reinforce successful existing brand elements and messaging? What may need to be borne in mind to avoid confusion or conflict with other existing brand communication?

(b) Target audiences

It's increasingly common to bear both internal and external audiences in mind when developing a creative platform for your employer brand. This means the employer brand identity that is developed will need to be adaptable to a wider spectrum of internal and external media, and the full spectrum of familiarity, from long-serving employees to external target audiences with no existing knowledge of the organization.

Even if your primary audience is external, it should be noted that it will undoubtedly be seen and commented on by existing employees. This needs to be borne in mind as the communication will be far stronger if supported by employees and reinforced through positive word of mouth.

(c) Current and desired reputation

How well known is your organization? How well known are your products and/or services? How familiar are people with your organization as an employer? How much does this vary across the different external markets in which you are operating?

How does your overall industry sector tend to be perceived from an employment perspective? How are you seen to differ from this general perception (if at all)? Who are your main competitors? How are you perceived in relation to your key competitors?

How are you perceived internally? Which of your EVP pillars are based on:

• Evident current strengths?
• Areas of aspirational stretch that you are investing in to improve?
• Areas of strength that are currently underestimated by employees and need to be better communicated?

How accurate is your external reputation as an employer in relation to the perceived internal reality above?

• Which perceptions align with your proven strengths and recognized weaknesses?
• Where do you have strengths that are poorly recognized?
• Which, if any, misconceptions relate to the past of the organization rather than the present, or general negatives associated with your industry that don't apply to your organization?
• Where is your reputation potentially more positive than you currently deserve?
• Where might you be benefiting from the overall halo effect of your products, services or business performance?

(d) Communication objectives

What are your main priorities from an external image perspective?

• Building awareness and familiarity?
• Building a new image (countering misconceptions and/or introducing new brand associations)?
• Reinforcing existing brand perceptions?

What are your main priorities from a recruitment perspective?

• Driving up immediate hiring volume?
• Improving hire quality?
• Building a longer term talent pool?

What are your main priorities from an employee perspective?

• Building awareness and familiarity with a new corporate/customer brand positioning or change programme?
• Communicating improvements that will drive employee engagement and retention?
• Celebrating strengths and promoting employee advocacy?

(e) Existing image and content assets

Do you have an image library, and what does it contain?

• Images that have already been licensed and cleared by the corporate brand team for external brand communication usage?
• Images of high enough quality to be used for marketing purposes?
• Images that highlight and celebrate the role of employees? (Does this cover most of your priority target groups/talent segments)?
• Potentially relevant video material (e.g. employee profiles or stories)?

Can this material be made readily accessible to the creative development team? What kind of budget might be available for creating new images and video material?

What kind of existing content could be re-purposed to support creative development? Given the strong demand for story-led communication, it is also important to assess what may be available in terms of historical archives, internal magazine articles or existing social content.

(f) Media considerations

Which digital properties will need to be re-designed to reflect your new employer brand identity? You will probably need to consider your:

• Global and local career sites (where relevant).
• Job microsites.
• Social media profile pages (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter etc.).
• YouTube video channel.
• Internal channels of communication, like intranets, dedicated pre-boarding and on-boarding sites, and internal networks.

Which paid external media will the creative be used in? While the proportion of paid advertising in the overall media mix has declined significantly, it still remains part of the overall mix in many companies. This may include:

• Job boards.
• Targeted advertising through professional and social networks.
• Targeted print publications.

What kind of physical/experiential display material may need to be developed? This question is particularly relevant to on-campus marketing, and may include anything from simple exhibition display materials to elaborately constructed immersive environments (see Chapter 14 for more detail).

What are the likely creative content demands of these media? While the classic approach to creative development tended to focus on ‘advertising’, set piece imagery and messaging has increasingly become more of a framing device for the more potent and engaging delivery of a much richer and varied mix of ‘content’ (see Chapter 15).

(g) Creative development and decision making process

Most of the information, insights and objectives covered above should be captured in a creative brief, whether in relation to the creative approach to the employer brand as a whole or a particular executional element within it. The absolutely critical elements for the brief are the:

• Brand identity parameters
• Target audience (and related insights)
• Communication objectives (including but not limited to the EVP)
• The intended media channels
• Budget and timeframe.

What kind of creative team do you need? (See Chapter 11 for the pros and cons of different in-house and agency solutions to brand development.)

Effective creative development tends to be iterative. This means a cycle of creating, testing, learning and adapting until an effective solution is reached. How many cycles you go through depends on:

• How much time you have to reach a conclusion.
• How broad or narrow the creative deliverables are.
• How many members of the management team need to be consulted.
• How confident you are in the judgement of managers vs target audiences.
• How good the creative solutions are!

The typical approach to developing or refreshing the creative platform for an employer brand tends to involve the following steps.

1. Developing a number of different creative routes. This should involve a number of different creative concepts (the big idea or thematic approach that underpins the brand or a specific campaign). This could fall within the overall corporate branding/identity style, or if the corporate identity guidelines allow reasonable scope for flexibility, it could involve a number of different design styles.
2. Narrowing the number of creative options down to a select short-list (through consultation with the employer brand steering group).
3. Testing and validating with key target audiences and relevant local management teams (within organizations that have significant presence in a number of different countries). The process for this is covered in the next chapter.
4. Translating research insights into a final creative recommendation to the senior management team with supporting data.

It's extremely important to establish the people and the process involved in judging and signing-off the creative work as this can have a significant effect on the quality and speed with which the creative process can be completed.

The first rule should be that the people involved in the decision-making process need to be well informed about the overall strategy and not simply making a judgement based on their own personal response to the creative work. Everyone claims some expertise in judging creative ideas. We are surrounded by advertising in our daily lives, and over the course of time have consciously and unconsciously passed judgement as consumers many thousands of times. This can be dangerous, as there is a significant difference between judging creative work as a consumer and as a professional communications manager, for the following reasons.

• The creative work needs to be judged from the viewpoint of the target audience, not our own viewpoint (a senior HR manager may have a very different sensibility to a graduate trainee).
• As consumers we tend to judge creative communication on the immediate impact of one or two executions, without consideration of the potential sustainability or adaptability of the creative idea over time and to different audiences. What appears to be a big idea in terms of immediate impact can be a relatively small idea in terms of its wider applicability.
• People tend to expect ideas to be presented in a familiar format (typically a headline and an image), while in employer brand marketing this format is seldom the dominant means of expression. This can present a significant limitation to the thinking required to develop (and accept) an idea that may need to work across a wide range of different media and formats.

The second consideration is the number and diversity of people involved. The bravest creative decisions tend to be taken by relatively small teams or a single individual. However, brave is not always effective, especially when a diverse audience needs to be considered. Large committees tend to default to the safest option, which is easy for the decision making body to agree to and equally easy for the ultimate target audiences to ignore. The most effective balance tends to involve wide local consultation and feedback on the potential creative direction, followed by a final decision made by a smaller, more qualified team.

In decentralized organizations, where a more democratic approach to sign-off may be required, beware of rounding-down to a more creative solution that's generic enough to work across a wide variety of locations, but is unlikely to inspire or excite particular interest. The alternative is to provide more scope for local adaptation to ensure braver and more distinctive creative ideas survive because they are not necessarily required to work everywhere.

Whoever is involved in the creative decision making process should be clear about:

• the creative brief and overall communication objectives;
• the difference between brand ideas, campaign ideas and individual executions;
• the degree of consistency required as well as the adaptation that will be allowed to meet local needs;
• their role in the process (are they providing feedback to be taken into consideration or yes/no judgement).