Millennials will make up 50% of the workforce by 2020 – so we decided to shake up their talent strategy and move from a more traditional approach to something better suited for the audience. Given millennial’s obsession with video, we knew it offered the perfect canvas to tell an engaging story that was super relevant for the job at hand.

The creative approach was twofold – launch the brand identity through “The Manifesto” film. Then, through "The Interview" interactive video, candidates had a real time opportunity to go through the first stage of the Heineken interview process, in a fun and entertaining way. Candidate’s responses were analyzed and placed them in one of 8 personality types (using sophisticated psychological science built from multiple studies, akin to Myers Briggs) such as “The Challenger,” “The Investigator,” or “The Reformer.”

As a global campaign platform, 70 markets activated media with local properties to deliver our message at scale to the right audiences, in over 23 languages.

But with only €200K in global media budget available, we needed to focus on the platforms that would achieve results. Local markets invested in display, video, and social media to deliver the interview, and to complement local plans, we centrally activated digital media – Facebook gave us the scale and sharing environment to generate engagements, whilst LinkedIn provided targeted relevancy for job seekers. We brokered a further global deal with LinkedIn wherein they would match added value impressions to market investments – making our investments work even harder.

Our tactics paid off, reaching 15M unique prospective candidates and generating over 4.5M video views. Our media increased traffic to HEINEKEN’s LinkedIn page +400%, added 65K new followers and tripled the number of qualified job applicants.

We have seen incredible results from a small campaign investment:

- 263K interviews were started, with an average 61% completion rate (a stellar accomplishment for a 5-10 minute video)

- Media delivered strong on-site performance driving 241,604 clicks to the website - 114,497 (47%) resulting in COMPLETED interviews.

- With a site bounce rate of only 3.61%, over 96% of consumers that arrived at our landing page explored the site. 10% of users also shared The Interview, drawing even more qualified millennials into the experience and recruitment pool.

But the best part was the impact to HEINEKEN – an increase of +300% in qualified job applications on LinkedIn for roles at HEINEKEN, driven by targeted media.

Industry response has also been strong, proving that HR outreach doesn’t have to be boring – knowing your audience and speaking to them how they want to be spoken to drives business results.

Heineken Go Places is, as AdWeek called it, a Human Resources campaign that is just as interesting and exciting as any other brand campaign you would expect from Heineken – no easy feat for a corporate category that is traditionally seen as unsexy. Go Places demonstrated that strong content requires smart media planning to drive great results. And the increase in qualified job applicants to Heineken shows we were looking for the right people in the right places with the right message.

Go Places leveraged Heineken Brand's Open Your World positioning to attract the best global talent for the company. With the millennial audience in mind, we shifted the strategy from the use of traditional recruitment agents to a new data first & social led strategy to capture the attention of young professionals.

To drive true authenticity for candidates we custom built audience groups that focused on values, lifestyle and behavioral signals that matched the core essence of the brand as it’s a well reported that millennials are attracted to companies & brands that represent their beliefs. These signals enabled us to reach beer fans and job seekers, and demographic targeting ensured we reached millennial men and women with little wastage.

We all know Heineken as a standout, global brand – but how do we attract the right talent for the company? We were challenged to bring more qualified local talent, especially in emerging markets, to apply for a job, as well as lift the level of engagement amongst existing employees. To accomplish this, we needed a distinct, recognizable employer brand as exciting and distinct as the brand’s consumer facing personality. Energy, excitement, and the openness Heineken espouses needed to come through – delivering a thorough, but concise message in a manner people would find engaging in order to carry on the journey towards the job of their dreams.