Winning “the war for IT talent"

Since the beginning of 2017, the shortage on the Dutch IT labor market has been increasing. At the end of 2017, 50% of IT vacancies were difficult to fill. Financial services is one of the industries that has the most difficulty in filling IT vacancies. ABN AMRO has a specific recruitment need for digital and IT professionals, whereby they have to position themselves as a potential employer in a tight labour market.

How can a perceived traditional bank like ABN AMRO be seen as an innovative and challenging employer by digital and IT professionals in this overwhelming labour market? And how can we also generate no less than 400 qualitative CV’s from digital and IT professionals within one year?

Digital and IT professionals don’t naturally consider the financial industry as a potential employer. Without realizing it, they share interests with ABN AMRO bank. 'Tech savvy' people like games and challenges. They like to challenge themselves and like to test their skills. Using these two insights we built a bridge between the world of the IT professionals and ABN AMRO.

In a market where IT professionals prefer to work for a tech company, it is challenging for a perceived traditional bank like ABN AMRO to stand out and be considered as a viable option.

That is why ABN AMRO launched The Lockdown. A unique game that seamlessly connects the interest of IT-professionals to topics that ABN AMRO also engages with. Such as artificial intelligence, info-security, cryptocurrency and blockchain. Set in 2028, players are challenged to prevent a worldwide financial meltdown in this brand experience.

The strategy is built on two insights:

- Digital and IT professionals don’t naturally consider the financial industry as a potential employer. But without realizing it, they share interests with ABN AMRO bank in subjects such as artificial intelligence, info-security, cryptocurrency and blockchain. And ABN AMRO stimulates an innovation culture with which the bank contributes to innovation within the financial sector.

- 'Tech savvy' people like games, challenges and puzzles. They like to challenge themselves and like to test their skills.

Connecting seemingly different worlds

Using these two insights we built a bridge between the world of the target audience and ABN AMRO. We create a challenging context in topics that ABN AMRO also engages with in order to involve the target audience, in such a way that it appeals to the imagination of digital and IT professionals.

A world class mobile AR game

The Lockdown is the first-ever mobile AR escape room in the world for iOS and Android. Through advanced gameplay and realistic scenarios the Lockdown feels like a thriller where you play the leading part yourself. AR enhances the visual gaming language that attracts our target audience. While the content also sheds a light on the financial themes at ABN AMRO.

Relevant content, realistic themes

For the production of the storyline and the puzzle mechanism, we closely collaborated with digital experts at ABN AMRO and with Sherlocked (architects behind some of the best escape rooms in the world). The 18 challenges in the game were developed with them. These puzzles reflect the challenges and workflows that digital and IT professionals will experience at the bank working on themes as blockchain, info-security, artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency.

Blackout during the TNW Conference

The Lockdown was launched in an extraordinary way at the TNW Conference, one of Europe’s biggest technology conferences, in the style of the game. During an announcement by Microsoft’s presentation, one of the leading tech employers, there was a blackout and the hacker from the game presented himself to the audience via large screens.

In a strained labor market, we positioned ABN AMRO as an innovative and challenging employer for digital and IT professionals in an unconventional way:

- The Lockdown has been downloaded more than 13.500 times (target was 7.500).

- The Lockdown was played over 90,000 minutes within six weeks. Players took a deep dive in puzzles and challenges about blockchain, info-security, artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency.

- There was an exceptionally high number of visitors to the recruitment website as a result: 10.641 unique visitors (213% above target).

- No less than 1040 qualitative CVs were received by ABN AMRO in the IT department during the campaign period. This is 30% more than the number of CVs that the bank received in the same period in 2017.

- Meanwhile, ABN AMRO has reached the best employer image of all banks when it comes to IT specialists. (Banken.nl, 31 januari 2019)