Media · TVC · Strategy
In partnership with Lifestory Creative
Bright Horizons
A research-led media buy, targeted recruitment for a childcare giant.
Media · TVC · Strategy
In partnership with Lifestory Creative
A research-led media buy, targeted recruitment for a childcare giant.
01 The brief
Bright Horizons needed qualified early years staff for specific nursery centres, with particularly heavy demand around London and Cambridge. The candidates they wanted weren't the type to spend weeks trawling Indeed, nor have their own relationship with a recruiter. They were younger, likely still living at home or on their own for the first time, possibly finishing up college, and perhaps the toughest hurdle was that a lot of them weren't actively looking at early years education.
The brief was largely speculative. The client and Lifestory were brave enough to try something and see what happened but they weren't expecting hires. They just wanted to see definitively if broadcast could work as a recruitment tool at all.
02 What we did
We ran two targeted broadcast VOD campaigns. On ITVX we focused on twelve specific centre locations. Rather than a broad national or even regional push, we mapped postcode-level audience data to identify the most likely candidates: younger viewers, college-adjacent areas, the right geography for the centres. The targeting was precise enough that we could cost-effectively align placements to relevant programming for our demographic. Then as a means of platform comparison, we ran the same again in a second campaign delivered with Channel 4's on demand service.
We produced the creative in-house, managed the media buy directly and arranged clearance and delivery. Being across all parts of the process meant the targeting fed straight into both what we made and where we placed it.
03 The result
While Bright Horizons came for a proof of concept, perhaps to see if a larger campaign might work in the future, they left the year of activity with seven new members of staff (including one we went on to meet on a later shoot).
In all we delivered 644k unique viewers, from which we generated 26 interviews and made 7 placements.
Broadcast recruitment isn't cheap, on the face of it. But a traditional agency placing seven early years candidates would charge comparable fees in placement costs alone - and with none of what broadcast brings alongside: the brand awareness, the residual impressions, a far wider candidate pipeline. They came to find out whether broadcast could work as a recruitment tool. It did - and it quietly did a few other jobs at the same time.