Cannes Lions

BECO. #STEALOURSTAFF.

TBWA\LONDON, London / BECO / 2020

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Case Film
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Overview

Entries

Credits

Overview

Background

BECo, a 166 year old social enterprise soap brand, invited employers across the country to #StealOurStaff. There are 1.1 million disabled people out of work in the UK. BECo are doing their bit - 80% of their staff have disabilities. The more soap they sell, the more jobs they create. But they believe every company could be doing more to reduce the disability employment gap. If their staff move onto bigger and better things, they can create more job opportunities for those who need it. Our brief was, encourage businesses to help to close the disability employment gap, by showing what BECo’s staff can do, highlight the unconscious bias taking place by employers and get disability talked about as part of the diversity agenda.

Idea

We flipped the traditional recruitment campaign on its head, and invited Britain’s employers to #StealOurStaff. If we find them work elsewhere then the vacancy can go to someone else who's disabled, unemployed and looking for a first step onto the career ladder. To get BECo staff in front of as many potential employers as possible, the existing BECo packaging design was subtly adapted to feature their CVs.

Strategy

Launched into select Waitrose & Sainsbury’s stores, BECo competes with the likes of Dove, Nivea, Palmolive and other Unilever or P&G brands, that have comparatively huge marketing budgets, plus decades of brand heritage.

In this environment, of auto-pilot repeat purchasing, BECo’s challenge was to get noticed to justify its existence on the shelf, and secure more listings, in more stores – all on a very limited budget. As a social enterprise, BECo not only had to grow to support the business investment, but also meet its social objectives. It wasn’t just a case of shipping units, but supporting livelihoods.

To shift the dial significantly, a campaign needed to go beyond the immediate product benefit and tap into the brand’s bigger purpose – the commitment to clean up Britain’s disability employment gap. BECo can’t do this alone, we had to convince all UK employers to be a bit more like them.

Execution

At the campaign’s heart was a packaging takeover. With over 1.7m of those buying their usual bath/soap products from Waitrose for example, using our soap boxes as mini billboards was our best bet to reach a mass audience.

The packaging was re-designed to include CVs of BECo’s employees whilst BECo’s website shared information to help employers actually steal its staff. It included fuller staff profiles, along with advice on hiring people with disabilities.

An open letter published in the Guardian urged businesses to hire more people with disabilities, while outdoor posters subverted famous brand endlines to guarantee the attention of those companies.

A series of films, starring BECo employees, riffed off TV’s audio-description function. These ran across BECo’s social channels & Sainsbury’s donated x1 60” spot for IDPWD.

BECo also sent bespoke boxes of its products to business leaders while social media activity targeted specific employers with the hashtag #StealOurStaff.

Outcome

The activity that ran across TV, OOH & The Guardian reached 10.1% of all UK adults, equating to 5.26m people and an equivalent media value of £119,713 gross. An impressive delivery given zero media spend using only owned channels & FOC media.

Brand awareness grew 83% and from 2018 to 2019, the average rate of sale increased a whopping 96% YOY.

Most importantly, every 5 litres of soap sold equates to an hour’s work, meaning we created 1,500 hours employment in 2019, further decreasing the disability employment gap.

Another big win was the increased distribution from 50 to 250 stores, increasing visibility of not only the brand but of BECo employees too. The campaign helped contribute towards an increase in +54% shelf facings for the brand YOY.

The biggest win of all was that over 40 potential employers contacted BECo and Allan received a job offer.