How times have changed. Remember when a campaign used to be print based – press and poster – with a digital presence, such as the odd rotating banner or two, etc,etc. Well the explosion of social media has certainly changed, and in some cases totally eradicated, that strategy. Though not entirely, as some sectors still need more than a Twitter feed and Facebook page to attract candidates. One of those sectors is hospitality – waiting staff and chefs. Where unsociable hours, shift patterns, transient candidates mean you still have to cast the net wider than 140 characters. For now, at least. Which brings us to our campaign for Zizzi. A mix of print, digital, social media, website and mobile – was the perfect recipe (sorry).
Recruiting for great waiting staff is never easy. They’re a ‘mobile’ audience. So a mobile website is a must, no? Well, yes it is – and not just an optimised version but purpose-built one. (As we always do for every client’s recruitment site.) Especially when the recruitment posters utilised a QR code taking you direct to the site – who needs to remember a URL these days? Scan it, store it, apply later, job done. And we even revamped the old traditional hospitality poaching card with these ‘new fangled’ QR codes. In fact, an average 10% of site traffic came through them.
Now moving on to Chefs. They’re constantly in demand – the good ones, that is. All the posters in restaurant windows won’t necessarily catch them. Social media can find some – especially if you campaign around certain TV chef programmes with a neat hashtag or two. That was one of our methods. Taking that thought a step further, we put out an ‘inspirational’ video by the Executive Chef at Zizzi on the campaign site. Now chefs, as we know, don’t like to wade through lots of information or want to make huge efforts to apply – even filling out an online application can be a pain. So going further, we made it even easier for them to see the opportunity with our digital advertising. The ad space became a ‘mini-site’. They could navigate to each page, have a look on social media and be inspired by the video. All from the big banner ad. Oh, and they could go directly to apply too.
So the methods may have changed – but the importance of understanding, and knowing how to reach, your target audience hasn’t.
This Zizzi work has been nominated in three of the RADS 2012 shortlists – Best Campaign, Digital Marketing and Campaign site. Here’s hoping for a good result or three on Thursday night.
