JCDecaux leveraged its own outdoor media assets to find talent.
The recruitment campaign in May 2022 join the changemakers more than doubled the average candidate applications.
Alissa Bartlett, JCDecaux chief people officer, told AdNews: “Like many businesses, recruitment has been high on the agenda, that’s why we launched our ‘join the changemakers’ campaign this year.
“We believe in the power of our own channel so we took a unique approach both to recruitment but also to socialising our name and getting our own brand out there.
“The best part is we used our own people for the campaign and we saw immediate results with a huge volume of visitors to our careers microsite, as well as an increase in applications.”
When looking at the motivation behind the campaign, JCDecaux wanted to not only to create a new stream for recruitment, but also show consumers what the brand is about and who are the people behind the company.
Bartlett said: “People see JCDecaux advertising everywhere, every day. Our brand is a familiar part of their lives.
“However, while potential candidates recognise our name, they don’t really know the JCDecaux brand, what we do, or our range of career opportunities that are available – they’re not all media sales roles.
“A lot of people would know JCDecaux due to the extent of our out-of-home network, but they couldn’t connect with our brand name – so we wanted to change that.
“The objective of the campaign was to build familiarity with JCDecaux as a business and brand, and drive talent to apply for an open role.
“Our success metrics for this campaign were visitation to the microsite, a significant increase in new candidate applications, and a reduction in unfilled roles.
“Our solution was to leverage the use of our own assets – one of the greatest media networks with the greatest scale in the country. Working with our internal marketing team, we devised a multi-format campaign – join the changemakers – to run across our small format, large format and transit networks.
“As part of the recruitment campaign we also built a bespoke career microsite which features content including company information, employee stories (video interviews), our values, and vacancies.
“This campaign was not just about the fact JCDecaux had job opportunities, but that there is a huge variety of opportunities – everything from technical, to poster rolling as well as marketing and sales roles. This campaign was about reaching people that were looking for a change in career or doing something new.”
An eye-catching and bold creative was important to the campaign but JCDecaux also wanted to keep the design simple to ensure its messaging - of showcasing a progressive, fast-paced and energetic brand - was clear to consumers at a glance.
The creative was developed by Alphabet Studio, to portray the campaign’s twisted people pictured above, actual JCDecaux staff was photographed then distorted in ways to literally turn heads and generate intrigue of the brand.
Bartlett said: “We knew this campaign’s creative couldn’t be generic – it really had to capture attention and be unexpected to raise awareness.
“People are at the heart and soul of our business so we made our people the centre of this campaign. Nine JCDecaux staff, from all areas, levels and roles of the business are featured in the change makers campaign.”
The recruitment campaign had an immediate impact, delivering hundreds of new, quality candidates. In the first eight weeks of the campaign, the newly launched JCDecaux careers website had 5084 visitors May 2 to June 24.
More importantly, these visits turned into applicants, with candidate applications more than doubling in the first month of the campaign with an increase of 132% in May 2022.
Bartlett said: “The launch fuelled our strongest recruitment month of the year with 21 roles filled in May 2022. The average applications per week increased by 67% across the entirety of the campaign.
“More than half of recent candidates have mentioned seeing the out-of-home campaign during their recruitment. Many candidates said they’d recognised the JCDecaux name, but hadn’t connected the name to what we do.
“This campaign and microsite gave candidates a better understanding of the JCDecaux brand, our EVP, our people, and our current vacancies.
“The campaign clearly demonstrates what we already know – the power of out-of-home.”
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