When it comes to recruitment marketing, don’t control your emotions

I’ve been in the recruitment marketing business for 38 years.

And in that time, I’ve heard a lot of talk about being ‘emotive’.

In other words, campaigns that spark an emotion in the audience, so they relate to the message – and the offer.

And to me, that means creating a message that's full of the emotion you want to spark.

Around 2007, we were pitching for a major piece of business to promote the global graduate recruitment programme for Standard Bank – the biggest bank in Africa.

The planners spoke to a lot of graduates who were already working at the bank to find out what made them tick. And they came back buzzing about the markets they worked in and the vibe of the company.

I was working with Duncan James, a fantastic art director. And after a couple of false starts, we looked closely at what the graduates had told us.

What came across was they were doing stuff nobody else was doing. As one put it: “Lots of my mates are in banking. But when I say I’ve just done a deal in Laos, they usually say: ‘Where the fuck’s Laos?’ That’s why I love it here – we’re in places nobody else is looking at yet.”

A pitch ad that actually ran

That was the spark. The raw emotion we wanted running through our campaign.

So we came up with a series of ads with headlines like: “Ethiopia? Why would I want to invest in Ethiopia?”, “A loan in Ouagadougou? Is that a currency?” and, of course, “Invest in Laos? Where the *@#! is Laos?”

All with the strapline: “Where we invest, others follow. Eventually.”

Some people in the agency thought we’d gone too far. But our Creative Director, Pete Rice, was right behind us and fought our corner to present the work.

So, at the pitch, we presented the client with two other concepts first. Then we hit them with that one. Starting with the lighter headlines and finishing with the Laos idea.

And we got the best reaction I think I’ve ever had from a client in a pitch. She got up, reached across the desk, grabbed the Laos concept and said “I bloody love that!”

Needless to say, we won the business.

All because we weren’t afraid to tap into some real emotions and put them on the page.

Now, would AI have spotted that? Or translated it in the way we did? I’m not sure it would.