Best Before Tomorrow
In 2018, as I decided to take a break from self-employment and apply for jobs in Brand Marketing, I was faced with a challenge: I knew the eclecticism of my profile might confuse the typical corporate recruiter. Besides, some peculiarities of the industries I had been working in, such as TV and live shows, could lead someone unfamiliar with them jump to the wrong conclusions. In particular, someone who was not acquainted with the short production cycles of work in the TV industry could misinterpret a series of assignments lasting less than a year as restless job-hopping.
I needed to prevent misunderstandings and reposition myself based on my strengths and transferable skills.
The challenge: positioning a multifaceted profile on a saturated job market.
My professional journey spans across different countries, disciplines, and industries. That makes it potentially hard to fit it within a conventional corporate job title. While my eclecticism had given me a competitive edge in entrepreneurial roles and consultancy, it can stand in the way of landing a corporate job.
Corporate recruiters in 2018 had little time to select candidates from hundreds of applicants, so profiles that were are less than straightforward were destined to the trash bin. And that was before AI tools took recruitment and job hunting by storm. The question, there and then, was: how to stand out?
I needed a strategic approach to highlight my strengths as a candidate and optimise my time and energy in the quest. My story risked staying untold with a conventional approach to job hunting: I could not leave it to my CV to describe who I was.
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
Said some US president (allegedly) and quoted yours truly
Strategy (sharpening the axe)
This famous tree-chopping quote is one of my favourite mottos. I love how vividly it describes the importance of research, strategy, and preparation – key aspects in my approach to work.
“Sharpening the axe” (read: understanding the problem, strategising an approach, preparing a solution) is about working smart, keeping focus on a result-oriented approach. It boils down to knowing what you’re doing and why, which helps optimising energy and resources to achieve more with less.
In my case, sharpening the axe meant analysing my situation and perspectives before jumping into action. A simplified SWOT analysis helped me identify threats and opportunities, while positioning my profile relatively to my goal.
| STRENGTHS: * Diverse and transferrable skills * Creativity * Multidisciplinarity * Full command of end-to-end processes in Comms * 20 years of experience * International profile * Prestigious clients | WEAKNESSES: * Complexity: at first glance, profile might look incoherent * Years spent as self-employed might make me look less employable * As Soup As Possible might be misunderstood for a simple food business |
| OPPORTUNITIES: * Mid-sized companies need M-shaped profiles * Recruiters reward people who go the extra mile rather than submitting cookie-cutter applications * Personal touch go a long way | THREATS: * Skimming: recruiters don’t have time to read between the lines * Automation tools used in recruitment penalise unconventional profiles * Saturated market |
Personal branding.
The conclusion was clear: to achieve my goal of receiving a job offer within a few weeks, I should invest in my personal brand in a way that would:
- Earn me visibility and make me stand out in a personal and urgent way
- Prove motivation, determination, and detail orientation
- Present a sample of my proficiency in different aspects of creative marketing and branding
- Demonstrate my skills in multichannel marketing campaigns
- Impress with a combination of creativity and effective project management
- Show how I carry out creative projects from concept to execution.
As a believer of the ‘show, don’t tell‘ rule, I knew that doing exactly that would speak louder than any grand claims in a conventional cover letter.
“Best Before Tomorrow”: personal branding meets guerrilla marketing
I went all-in with an unconventional approach to job hunting. My applications would take the form of a boutique micro-campaign combining online and offline, multi-sensory elements to surprise recruiters and demonstrate my skills. I created a landing page with a self-promotional video, a card with a QR-code pointing to it, a branded box with homemade meringues. I also baked those meringues and mailed the boxes to a shortlist of job posters, then waited. Out of the first three boxes I mailed, all received praise for the innovative and surprising approach to job hunting. The third one earned me a job offer that I accepted.
The journey
The card inside the box invited the recipient to take a “meringue break” while visiting the landing page. Here, they would watch a video showing three different versions of myself describe the different aspects of my expertise and skills. The copy explained the campaign goal: demonstrating my approach to problem solving (in that case, getting someone busy to notice my application) and my ability to manage projects that involved a variety of deliverables, from digital to physical …meringues included!
The COMPONENTS
| Assets | Goal | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Naming | Highlight one key message and convey urgency in a unique way. | The campaign name “Best Before Tomorrow” was consistent with the perishable goods used in the campaign (the meringues) and implicitly urged to open the box and consume the content as soon as possible. |
| Visual identity | Demonstrate skills in professional branding and give coherence to the whole campaign. | Logo with the campaign name implemented throughout the deliverables. |
| Packaging | Deliver the message in a surprising way, while providing a practical solution and reinforcing the visual identity of the campaign. | A flat box designed to be mailed with minimal cost and delivered with regular correspondence featured the sticker-seal “Best Before Tomorrow”, and enticed the recipient to open it to discover its contents. |
| Card | Call to action. | The card invited the reader to take a meringue break while visiting the website, including a QR-code, link, and contact details. |
| Landing page | Provide continuity between the offline hook of the campaign and the message embedded in its online part, while enhancing the ‘personal’ approach of the campaign. | The landing page was the reveal moment of the personal branding campaign. |
| Video | Convey my personality, professionalism, creativity, and experience. | The video shows the different hats I can wear at the same time. |
Here is a glimpse of the landing page experience (without showing you the full video -I’m no longer as shameless as in 2018):
Are you looking for someone who can create and execute an unconventional campaign or come up with creative ideas to promote your brand?