Congratulations to our Mindshare and GroupM teams – together they won at the inaugural Talent Acquisition Innovation Awards! Launched by Human Capital Institute and Randstad Sourceright, the goal of the TAI is to recognize the hard work, innovation, and commitment of in-house talent acquisition teams. The winning campaign from Mindshare and GroupM was a prime example of agency collaboration and showcased how strategic talent acquisition can drive real business impact.
What did we do? Though geo-targeting and programmatic advertising techniques are often employed in consumer marketing campaigns, they’re hardly ever used in recruiting efforts. Mindshare and GroupM sought to change that. Here’s how.
The Messaging: Through extensive research, we identified a few key elements that target candidates value the most while seeking a job with us – global career opportunities, flexible working arrangements, and a great office location. The team designed creative that highlighted these key benefits of working at Mindshare.
Programmatic geo-targeting media buys: We designed a programmatic media investment plan that covered the office area of all our competitors in New York, as well as independent agencies, tech companies, and publishers. The display ads were distributed programmatically based on the location of the audience’s digital devices and across publishers and media frequented by our key audience – sites such as Business Insider, CNN, Reuters, and more.
As soon as someone entered the set location, the ads were triggered when they browsed the internet on their mobile device or laptop. With a clear call-to-action, we directed the user to a custom landing page where they could fill out a quick and simple form on their job preferences and work experience. In doing so, we could then direct them to the most relevant job openings.
Elevate the campaign in the elevators: We also ran the ads in the often-ignored space of the office elevator. In the office buildings of tech companies and publishers who are less sensitive and familiar with us, we ran the ads on the digital screens of their elevators to increase awareness of career opportunities with Mindshare. In buildings where our main competitors reside, to avoid backlash, we toned down the messaging, and instead, presented interesting, original Mindshare insights and statistics about workplace culture, and other topics of interest to our audience. A subtle call-to-action attracted attention and traffic to our career site in the meantime to get more leads.
The team presented these insights and the ensuing results at the 2019 Strategic Talent Acquisition conference in Denver last week. The prize for winning was a $5,000 check that we donated to the United Fund of Puerto Rico.
