An innovative communication campaign, involving public authorities and SMEs, to attract new talents with targeted slogans based on humour.
Rennes is the second French city for setting up startups on cybersecurity. However, numbers of IT security companies struggle to hire new profiles, which is slowing their growth: they are not sufficiently staffed to cope with the requests. They regularly mention this matter as critical to their development.
Attracting new talents is a collective challenge. High-educated engineers look for a set of innovative companies where they will be able to find opportunities at different steps of their professional career. They also need a human community and adequate facilities to ensure the integration of themselves and their family. Attracting talents is also a condition to attract new innovative companies in the regional ecosystem.
Our communication campaign relies on the regional brand, “Marque Bretagne”, which is managed by BDI – the regional development agency. Since 2011, BDI has been working on the identity of Brittany to give a modern image of the region and help to attract investors.
A first campaign focused on cybersecurity has been carried out in 2018 and 2019 under the “Marque Bretagne” graphic charters with funny slogans. Postcards, posters, sponsored tweets have been disseminated during the International Cybersecurity Forum in Lille.
On May 2019, BDI made available a toolbox to companies. From now on, companies can design their own campaign to target the profiles that they are looking for. Regional institutions support their promotion through social media.
Resources needed
- Project manager with marketing skills
- Original visual identity and support: 250,000 Euros
- Advertising space (twitter, linkedin, etc.): 2,500 Euros
- Advertising panels: graphic design (250 Euros), printing (600 Euros)
- Postcards: graphic design (75 Euros), Printing (200 copies = 155 Euro
Evidence of success
1- The online campaign was actively spread by the local IT security SMEs.
2- We managed to reach our target: IT security engineers from other territories.
- 690 clicks to job advertisements posted by our SMEs.
- On Linkedin: 48 905 advertisements viewed, 741 engagements (clicked, shared or liked links). 86% of the reached people come from Paris, with skills in IT technologies. An average price by click: 3,51 euros
- On Twitter: 241 680 advertisements viewed, 3 554 engagements.
Difficulties encountered
We do not know the number of job applications directly linked to the campaign. Companies could ask during the job meeting how the engineers knew them. The number of people visiting Brittany’s stand was steady, despite the campaign. How can we transform digital campaign in real human relation?
Potential for learning or transfer
Attracting new talents is one of the most important problems quoted by our partners during the first sessions of the CYBER project.
Some factors are key to make the communication campaign a success:
- The communication campaign is a piece of a larger action we run collectively with IT security companies: cyber-breakfasts, common stands on fair trades, etc.
- Gathering a community of IT engineers and companies to validate the strategy and the messages that will be spread so that they will correspond with their culture and expectations. The “Cybervalley”, our previous slogan, had been perceived as too business and marketing-oriented by the regional“geeks community”, that prefers fun messages and quirky slogans.
- Do not hesitate to use sponsored materials in order to reach your targets (for instance, the engineers with IT skills living in Paris).
- To go further, companies need to be helped in developing their “employer brand” to propose to these talents projects which makes sense.
Tags: Communication, Digital, Technology, Cyber security
