The 360 Recruitment Advertising Blog

A while back I wrote about the ideas that got away and said that I would revisit this theme from time to time. So here’s another batch of ideas that were recently presented to First Drinks Brands.

Each November The Grocer has a drinks industry supplement and this year First Drinks featured heavily – they are currently the country’s leading supplier of premium spirit brands in the UK Off Trade after all. Whilst First Drinks didn’t have any live vacancies on offer at the time they didn’t want to miss an ideal opportunity to both promote their employer brand and direct any casual observers to their Pioneering Spirit careers microsite.  As well as appearing in the drinks issue of The Grocer (as a double sided card insert no less) the ads also ran on Grocer Jobs, Brand Republic and in Marketing.

The whole campaign was created in partnership with First Drinks’ retained recruitment consultants The Illingworth Partnership.

David

Put your future first

For the true connoissuer

The spirit of adventure (concept scamp)

Time to think about your future

Happy birthday to you squashed tomatoes and stew bread and butter in the gutter happy birthday to NICKY!

Make a birthday wish!

Not recruitment, and we didn’t do it ourselves but Princess Cruises are one of our clients and this is a fab example of viral marketing…

David

As Mark has already discussed the creative brief is the most important information the agency needs on any project we undertake. However, actually getting an in-depth brief can prove a bit difficult sometimes. There’s many reasons for this (believe me we’ve heard them) but the most common reason has to do with an annoying thing called the media deadline.

One of our clients, P&O Cruises are launching a new superliner called the Azura in April 2010 and they are looking for talented west-end calibre entertainers to perform on the inaugural cruise. Francesca and I were called down to their (fab) spanking new offices a couple of weeks ago to take an urgent brief, the proposition was decided on the spot* with the client and we jumped back on the train with a 48 hour artwork deadline.

Kirsty and I cracked on with the concepts immediately and then I got on with the colouring in…

…and, as you can see, we’d obviously been on the Starbars that day.

Anyway, the client loved the concepts, chose their fave and then I had to hastily arrange a photo-shoot. I phoned Dave at DHP Digital who was happy to oblige and we made the deadline with minutes to spare (it’s surprising how often this happens – there might be a blog in here somewhere). The ad appeared in The Stage and as an added bonus we created a Twitter feed where people could find more info.

The final ad in The Stage

David

Your budget might be shrinking, but your creative recruitment strategy doesn’t have to.

After all, you still have recruitment needs. It’s just that you have that bit less money. For now, at least.

The good news is that being creative about your recruitment doesn’t have to be hugely expensive. Although it can mean being bold.

Smaller budgets mean that recruitment strategies and processes need to be clever. They simply must deliver the right high quality staff – in a cost-effective way.

So get thinking about your recruitment. Have you thought about open days? Websites? Radio ads? Cinema ads? TV? Podcasts? Placing your ads in popular online games? Digital panels at train stations? Sponsoring keywords online?

I’ve merely scratched the surface here. There is so much we can do for you. Because we always think creatively. It’s a 360° thing.

Kirsty

Chances are the recruitment ads you see on a daily basis in the press, online and out and about are not the only ideas presented back to the client. Most agencies will suggest 3 or more concepts based on the original brief. The client will then choose their favourite and the other ideas will simply disappear never to be seen again.

There’s nothing wrong with this, everyone has different opinions and tastes as to what makes a compelling recruitment ad and, after all, the client is the one that is footing the bill. What it does mean though is that sometimes the ad concept that was favoured by the agency (and lets be honest here the creative team that came up with it) is not always the ad that ran.

I’ve often wanted a way of displaying these lost ideas and this blog offers the perfect opportunity. So, over the coming months we will be giving you a peak at the ones that got away.

This first example is actually a couple of yeasr old now but I dug it out the other day as Martin Bojam was looking for examples of education related advertising. So what we have here are the three campaigns that were presented back to BOC for their graduate recruitment campaign. See if you can guess a) which one ran, and b) which one I would have preferred to have ran…

David

BOC Graduate Ad Concepts - A

Download PDF of the full ad and web campaign – A

BOC Graduate Ad Concepts - B

Download PDF of the full ad and web campaign – B

BOC Graduate Ad Concepts - C

Download PDF of the full ad and web campaign – C

Our website, 360inspire.com has won a fantastic design award, of which we’re rather proud.

The website www.coolhomepages.com showcases sites that are unique, brilliantly designed and are also user friendly in their functionality. They particularly praise pages that they feel are a bit special – the ones that really stand out.

Our own site has been included in the Corporate, Flash, Layouts and Very Clean categories. Great stuff.

See for yourself at www.360inspire.com and rate our site at www.coolhomepages.com.

We’re busy patting ourselves on the back now. But not for too long, as we want to get cracking on more exciting projects. Watch this space.

Kirsty

One of the best bits about being a ‘creative’ is you get to design lovely birthday cards (and sometimes leaving cards, sniff) for the whole agency. It gives us a chance to have some lighthearted (and sometimes evil) fun. Every agency does these cards and in the past I’ve even had cards given to me designed by account managers (one of them was very good, if a bit pornographic).

I’ve often wanted to share these cards with a wider audience. In fact I think a website where people can upload these personalised cards would be a great and beautiful thing. In the meantime though, here’s the first of a semi-regular feature featuring the birthday card Rav designed for our MD, Graeme Holiday (I won’t mention how old he is).

David

Can you recognise the lyrics? They're one of Graeme's faves...

Not much happening here. A bit of colouring in maybe?

I said don’t read it. Oh well, now you’re here you might as well know that this is a work in progress. I’m building a blog for 360 Degrees Advertising and I suppose the best way of checking it is to blog as I go.