Would you like to sit beside your employer brand at a dinner party?
Picture this. You're sitting beside your employer brand at the table. What are they like? Are they boring you? Making too many jokes? Or stating the obvious as if it were something new and innovative?
When you’re deep in the trenches with a project, it’s easy to get caught up in metrics and the minutiae of design, messaging and photography. But ultimately, the end goal of employer brand work is simple - get the right people to like your organisation.
The power of being a likeable brand is massively overlooked. If people warm to the employer brand you’ve created, they’ll want you as an employer. It’s basic human psychology. If your target audience are indifferent about you though, it's probably worse than if they dislike you because you become invisible.
You're forgotten. Discounted. Gen Z and Millennials don't just ignore them brands they disagree with, they delete them. So, the personality of your brand is massively important.
Here’s how to build the employer brand that talent is dying to sit beside.
The Three Elements of Likeable Employer Brand Creative
Resonance
Your employer brand has to sit well or chime with its audience.
This is why getting the strategic “what” that you’re trying to convey nailed down is crucial.
Creating something that resonates means saying the right thing to the right people because you know it’ll land well. It’s knowing you have a compelling fact that will strike a chord with the people you’re targeting.
An Original Idea
Your employer brand won’t get noticed if it feels familiar.
Do you bother to share stuff you feel like you've seen a million times before? Whether it’s on a social feed or a billboard, it's hard to get noticed.
So you need something that stands out. But that doesn't necessarily mean you need a crazy image or concept.
In fact, outlandish creative can sometimes cloud your message. You don't want a creative idea get in the way of a great piece of information or fact.
If you've got something brilliant to say, push that to the front. The creative branding is just there to prop it up.
Distinctive Execution
In the employer brand world, if you haven't seen anyone else doing it, that's a good thing.
Whatever your idea, it will land better and with more people if it is executed in a different way. Distinctive execution is about aiming for something that looks, feels and sounds fresh.
Whether it’s with the design, photography, headlines or tone of voice, don't be a “me too”.
There’s huge opportunity in the employer branding and talent attraction world because so much of the work feels the same.
There’s a sense of “we'll put a person in it and they’ll be at work having a nice time,” or “we’ll put more than one person in it because we do teamwork here.” It's patronising to a marketing literate audience. They’re not dumb.
I saw some work earlier which had a straightforward message. It was a classic example of not letting a creative idea to get in the way of some cracking insight and good selling points. But the team had used a tone of voice that I hadn't seen before in this world, which felt fresh while being appropriate for that company.
So, likeable employer branding has these three features.
Once you’ve got a message that resonates, an original idea and a distinctive way of executing it, come back to that analogy.
Would you like to sit beside your employer brand at a dinner party?
I’m betting your answer will change.