Plato's Special Sauce recruitment campaign

A growing business doesn’t just need more people, it needs more of the right people. But recruiting is hard, and recruiting ad-wary senior creatives and marketers is even harder. We’ve always said ‘people are our special sauce’. So to get the right people’s attention, we poured our blood, sweat and tears into a creative spin on this deep cultural truth from within our business and went large spreading the message.

From pre-launch teasers to a strategic and dramatic launch phase of high-impact billboards and street posters around key locations in Wellington and Auckland, the campaign was carefully curated to make some noise! The tongue-in-cheek creative pointed to a bespoke campaign microsite, featuring long-form satirical content that followed a new starter, Brian, on the beginning of his journey with Plato Creative. The video featured all Plato staff giving both an insight into our culture but also our purpose-built environment.

Applications came pouring in with over 250 submissions for a whopping 246% campaign ROI and 12 excellent intermediate to senior hires. The hard metrics are impressive, but what is equally remarkable, is the residual brand awareness uplift that is being felt long after the campaign has ended. This idea put us on the map. Clients in Auckland exclaimed that ‘we’re seeing it everywhere’ and our hiring team is finding that nearly every candidate they have spoken to is not just aware of who we are but much more engaged and connected to why they want to work at Plato. It proves the power of a simple yet impactful idea, well executed across multiple channels.