Deloitte Graduates: Case Study

Deloitte Graduate Campaign link

The Brief

Deloitte is one of the world’s leading professional services firms, offering careers across audit, tax, consulting and corporate finance to two distinct markets: graduates and experienced hires.

Deloitte’s challenge was an inconsistent employer brand presence in both market and media.

And so our brief was to bring consistency across sourcing channels and establish clear and targeted messaging that would lead to more efficient recruitment and direct savings, rather than being dependant on recruitment agencies.

In the graduate market, research showed us that the Deloitte brand was well known and respected. However, graduates needed to be clearer about exactly what each service area covered and what it would offer them.

Discovering Deloitte

Research (including focus groups with 135 students from London to Edinburgh) told us graduates wanted to know what exactly Deloitte did, how they were different from the other Big Four employers and which service line was right for them. This informed the messages we used throughout our campaign.

Two other factors seemed even more important: a sense of owning one’s career and an element of challenge. We were aiming for the very brightest graduates, who actively wanted to be tested to the limit.

It’s your future. How far will you take it?

Our campaign message spoke to this audience, which implied ownership and challenged the graduates at the same time.
We wanted to do everything we could to help graduates, as this would be one of the biggest decisions they would have to make: where to begin their career.

Additional strategic elements created as a result of research were:

  • • A sector-focused approach based on four target audiences
  • • Direct, relevant and engaging communications, based on personal experience
  • • A continuous conversation with graduates throughout the whole year
  • • Honest communications that created a good first impression; no gimmicks

Challenges

Campus activity needed to deliver the same results from the year before but with a significantly reduced budget and we wanted to significantly reduce printing costs.

Our Solution

To deliver on all of the objectives, it was clear we had to work more closely with the client than any of us had before. To give an idea of the scale of the challenge, we had to meet the needs of 23 internal stakeholders, up to executive board level. We also had to fit into Deloitte’s global recruitment strategy – that saw us working closely with Ogilvy and Mather in New York, too. In fact, to help coordinate the project effectively our account director also spent time working from Deloitte’s offices.

With a clearly laid out strategy, it was up to our creative and production teams to execute our messages over a wide variety of media.

How to reach our audience?

Print ads

We dedicated a press ad each to every service line, plus some for key messages, such as highlighting technology roles. We also targeted specific audiences, thrown up by our research, like second jobbers and non-finance students. The copy focussed on the reader, clearly explaining how the graduate would benefit.

Website

Deloitte’s website had won awards before but we knew we there was room for improvement. We focussed more on the reader, presenting the features of each service line as benefits to the prospective employee. And we removed all signs of corporate speak and jargon so it was clear what we were talking about. We refreshed the content but are on year two of our strategy of innovation for the website.

Campus challenge

We worked with Deloitte and Graduate Promotions to help them run a hugely successful campus puzzle challenge that saw students scrambling to discover how their university had performed.

Giveaways

We expressed a key Deloitte message: “‘we supply the opportunities – what you do with them is up to you”, through fridge magnets with key campaign words that graduates could arrange to make their own statements.

Event invites

Deloitte already had an incredible range of engaging events for graduates to attend to find out more. It was up to us to reword the invites to explain better what was in it for the reader.

Print management system

We provided templates Deloitte could update by amending or adding details so it could invite graduates to its wide range of events at Universities around the country.

Films

In addition to an introductory video featuring employees answering the question “What do you want from your future?”, each service line was represented with a recent graduate talking about their work.

Brochure

We combined the brochure with a notebook and pull-out wall planner, so graduates could use it as a journal. This saved money and was also a functional product that graduates could carry around with them long after any event took place.

Media strategy

National media, including Prospects and Milkround, online postings at key graduate recruitment sites, YouTube, events at 30 target universities, generating PR around links with London 2012 Olympics, real life business case study competitions, sponsorship of clubs and societies.

The Result

The graduate campaign achieved the following results, each impressive in their own right:

  • • Deloitte attracted a 3% increase in applications on the year before.
  • • 95% of these candidates accepted, a 5% increase on the previous year, indicating that our strategy to more effectively target candidates with clear messages that informed them about each service line was successful (i.e. we were attracting candidates who were better informed about Deloitte and more motivated to accept an offer from them).
  • • The print management system led to a reduction in production costs of well over 50%, compared to the previous year.
  • • The campus challenge reduced campus attraction costs by 50% and still delivered results.
  • • Each campus event was visited by an average of 1,000 students.
  • • The national University puzzle challenge web page attracted hits from over 900 students, keen to see how they had performed.