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Sometimes it's a joy to write about a great recruitment advertising campaign; and I have an example here that I am going to break over two blog posts because it's a shame to cover all of this in one.

In a lot of our (eBrands) employer brand work, we sometimes create concepts in partnership with a client that feature emotive themes for them to be knocked back for one reason or another.  Often it can be to do with a level of overall discomfort within the organisation for touching on these themes, or because 'gut responses' don't sit in a clients criteria for a recruitment matrix for desirable candidates.

Employment Branding in Australia needs to have its creative bar RAISED and it needs to RAISE some emotions in its targets.  I am so passionate about this.  How dare we as 'vendors' take our internal stakeholders and candidates for granted and treat them like automatons.  How often do we create a brand position that can be potentially powerful, only for it to be diluted for various reasons until the existing corporate personality sits on a piece of paper that communicates...the same thing as your competitor.  All the effort we put into products leaves little residual energy for our people.

It's outrageous - there are not many decisions that are more important in life than choosing your employer - you might pay a recruitment consultant 18% of a salary to sell your proposition - and at that point its too late.  The candidate is evaluating all the offers on the table, and if your brand does not peek its head above the crowd, the job application becomes a transaction mainly on facts, with little room for shared values.  I really believe that you need to engage staff through the gut, benefits checklists become easier to tick when a candidate loves and agrees with what you do.

So, what can we do?  We can start doing what successful  marketers do - create a truthful idea which resonates; and place that idea in a space where you can maximise its value.

Navyformoms.com is a great campaign, I have picked one site in particular so that I can give you a flavour of what has been done.  Grand Central Station in New York is a famous icon, but importantly its one of New York's major public transport hubs, rich in foot traffic.  This campaign has be almost insularly implemented on the site between Grand Central's main public thoroughfare and the Shuttle line (this takes you to Times Square).  So for this blog I want to show you some of the visual images which decorate the thoroughfare.  There's a mix of photography, short-copy ads, and a projector presentation.  The other elements of the campaign I will cover in an update early next week, although I will add a video to this post shortly.