Sometimes a client needs spuds and sometimes they need truffles. They both come from the same place after all, and they both taste great.
Creating an employer brand for a revolution in biomedical research
The Francis Crick Institute is currently being built in North London. When opened, it will be a world-leading centre of biomedical research and innovation. It will promote connections between researchers, disciplines and academic institutions and between healthcare organisations and businesses. They want it to have the scale, vision and expertise to tackle the most challenging scientific questions underpinning health and disease.
It is a genuinely fresh development for the UK and global biomedical research community, so we felt it was important that we told its story in a fresh way so that it stands out. Not the usual smiley people in lab coats stuff that the sector is plagued with. Luckily, the client was on the same page – they’d had their fill of lab shots too.
And so we created this striking new employer brand for them. Here are some selections from the brand guidelines I wrote to give you a flavour of the look and feel and the messaging.
King.com makes games. Social games. Little addictive treats played on Facebook and on your phone. In fact, they are the number one games developer on Facebook. Which is why they are expanding. Massively. To help grab some of the smartest and most creative techies in the world, they booked themselves in at the annual Games Developer Conference in San Francisco. And then turned to us to create a branded experience to wow the visitors at their stand.
Now isn’t this fancy? We created a lovely, effects-heavy spot for BAE Systems and then embedded it in a credit card sized player and mounted it on the cover of a trade magazine. It plays with full colour and sound. Impressive, eh?
BP has a small film production house they’ve partnered with. While we created BP’s new graduate recruitment campaign. And so we came together to make this overview film of BP and where graduates can fit in. Some compromises in the back and forth and perhaps one too many cooks at points, but it came together very nicely in the end.
So Bombardier is all about getting people around cities and between cities. They are the world’s only manufacturer that makes both planes and trains and are at the forefront of the evolution of mobility solutions.
Right now they are helping the London tube modernise – namely the tricky Circle, District, Metropolitan, and Hammersmith & City lines. And they need lots of engineers to make it happen. We proposed this campaign to help find the signalling engineers. They’re the guys that will make the trains run faster and more frequently, and in doing so help Londoners make precious time.
So first there was TSB Bank. Then there was Lloyds TSB. And then TSB was dropped. And now Lloyds are bringing TSB back as a brand new bank, separate to Lloyds, that will offer a genuine alternative in the UK financial sector. It will focus on customers and small businesses - no casino stuff. And it will keep its savings and loans in balance. But they need lots of people to make it happen. And this site is the focal point in the campaign to find them.
This careers website is actually the first piece of comms to go live for the new TSB brand. It’s nice to create work that the branding agencies have to take their lead from - and not the other way around - for once!
Here’s a nice one. The BBC was looking for the brightest tech minds to join their Future Media division. So we created this interactive expanding banner for the UK homepage of Wired. The user’s interaction breaks iconic BBC content out of the TV box and expands it across multiple screens – which is exactly what you’ll be doing if you join the team.
Over 6,666 pieces of copy in six years
I was thinking about this the other day: Just how much copy have I written for ad agencies in London? I started off as a junior creative cranking out 7-10 pieces a day – and of course I still get ‘em in when needed – so the numbers really have racked up. Press and online copy. Most of it long copy.
Off the top of my head, some of the clients have included: Vodafone, Coors Brewers, Bank of America, GE, Barclays, American Express, Selfridges, BBC, Microsoft, CSC, T-Orange, Amey, RSA, PartyGaming, Jones Lang LaSalle, BAE Systems, Deloitte, Amnesty, Morgan Stanley, PwC, Cobham, Ingeus, AstraZeneca, TUI Travel, Zurich, EE, Scottish & Newcastle, Oxfam, Boots, Britvic, Capgemini, Deutsche Bank, Heinz, Jaguar Land Rover, Logica, Rolls-Royce, Yahoo! – on and on.
So the maths: Let’s say an average of seven pieces a day for three years, maybe four pieces a day for another year, and maybe two pieces a day for two years. Which in maths-speak is: (((7x230)x3)+((4x230)x1))+((2x230)x2)=6,670.
Let’s say, for the sake of an average, that each piece was 400 words long. That means I’ve written 2,668,000 words since I started in advertising in Jan 2007. And that’s not including writing websites. I need to lie down.
Baker & McKenzie started in the back of a cab in Chicago. True story! That was in 1948. A year later they kicked off in London with just four lawyers and a secretary. Today, they employ 3,800 lawyers in 71 offices across 44 jurisdictions.
So they know a thing or two about constantly growing. Which is why they try to find their future talent good and early. And we created this mobile optimised site to help them do just that. It’s targeted at GSCE students up to postgrads, and aims to explain to them what commercial law is and how to get into it. It’s not about hard selling Baker & McKenzie; it’s about getting the best information to the right people.
And it really is a mobile optimised site – in fact, it doesn’t work on desktop browsers at all. You have to use it on your mobile. So the copy really has to take the reader on a real journey through the various stages – visually, it’s little more than the firm’s logo and a globe image they’re very fond of. So it’s one you’re going to need to read to appreciate.
Sometimes you’re given a problem to solve, not a brief. That’s what this one was. There was a lot of staff interview footage in the can from a previous shoot, a new product they wanted to promote, and a company value of working as one team they wanted to shout about. They wanted all that brought into a new short film – all with a small budget to make it happen. So I studied all the materials and wrote this script to solve the problem. Came out nicely in the end. And it’s hosted on a lovely new site for Heinz, heinzcareers.co.uk - in fact, the site won Best Employer Website at the 2013 RAD Awards.
Nice little gag. A recruitment company running a full page press ad for an upcoming industry awards do. Sometimes image libraries have just the thing you need (but only sometimes).
