Building what matters by standing out from the crowd

Southbase is one of New Zealand’s fastest-growing construction companies. With a national pipeline of high-profile projects secured, they needed a recruitment campaign to attract quality talent while reducing reliance on traditional recruitment agencies. The challenge was doing this for a sector notoriously hard to recruit senior and specialist roles in.

We developed ‘Build What Matters’, connecting the career-defining projects Southbase delivers with what people can build for themselves: careers, skills and relationships. Each execution featured a real employee, with concentric rings representing the impact of their work across people, projects and process.

The campaign ran across localised social in Auckland and Queenstown, international targeting to bring Kiwi talent home from the UK, geo-targeted billboards near competitor worksites, and high-engagement novel placements.

Across six weeks, the campaign delivered 3.7 million paid impressions and 22,282 careers page views, with 89% of careers traffic occurring during the campaign. More than 150 people applied, 125 candidates entered the pipeline in the launch month, and around 10 high-quality candidates progressed for immediate consideration for senior and specialist roles. The campaign delivered strong talent while keeping recruitment costs well below standard agency fees.