Title	DEAR CEO, DONATE AN APPLICANT
Brand	RED CROSS FLANDERS
Product/Service	EMPLOYER BRANDING
Category	A07. Charities, Public Health & Safety, Public Awareness Messages
Entrant	DUVAL GUILLAUME Antwerp, BELGIUM
Idea Creation	DUVAL GUILLAUME Antwerp, BELGIUM
Media Placement	ZENITHOPTIMEDIA Brussels, BELGIUM
PR	DUVAL GUILLAUME Antwerp, BELGIUM

Name	Company	Position
Koenraad Lefever / Dries De Wilde	Duval Guillaume	Executive Creative Directors
Luc Botten / Geert Van Horenbeeck / An Luyten	Rode Kruis-Vlaanderen	Communications Director / Marketing Manager / PR Manager
Jasper Declercq / Lode Vochten / Sebastiaan Dessaux	Duval Guillaume	Copywriter / UX Designer / Art Director
Jet Vervenne / Dorien Van Antwerpen / Damjan Cvetkovic	Duval Guillaume	Account Manager / Account Executive / Digital Account Executive
Kathy Van Looy	Duval Guillaume	PR Manager
Wim Sels / Bart Janvier	Duval Guillaume	DTP managers
Joke De Block	ZenithOptimedia	Account Director
Carole Steger	Nine O'Clock Somewhere	Digital Account Manager

The Campaign

In order to open people’s eyes and draw their attention to the Red Cross as a valuable employer, we asked them, instead of donating blood or money, to donate an applicant. We started the campaign with a surprising stunt: In a Flemish newspaper we published a letter signed by the CEO of the Red Cross, addressing all fellow-CEO’s reading the piece to donate applicants. The letter was noticed by the Flemish press and became a news item on radio and TV. After the PR exposure we extended the campaign to print ads, online bannering and flyers in the railway stations, in which the population was now asked to donate talented and ambitious individuals in their network to the Red Cross.

Execution

The campaign started with an open letter, published in Belgian dailies, with a request to donate applicants. The letter was signed by the CEO of the Red Cross and addressed to his fellow-CEO’s. In the weeks after the open letter, we published ads where we also asked the broad public to donate talented individuals in their network looking for an interesting job. The ads were published full page in business magazines and shared across social media. The campaign ‘Donate an Applicant’ was also supported by bannering and flyers that were handed out in the main Belgian railway stations.

The campaign is still ongoing, but until now we counted 32.500 views on the landing page doneereensollicitant.be. All jobpages behind doneereensollicitant.be and rodekruis.be counted 58.000 views so far, four times more than the views in September. According to Google it concerns about 5.638 unique visitors. The Red Cross is receiving three times more resumes than normal, but since the hiring process has only just begun, it is still too early to measure how many of the vacancies were filled.

The Situation

The core of this employer branding campaign is a PR idea: an honest open letter from the CEO of the Red Cross. He asked his fellow CEO’s nationwide to donate their capable, but ‘unused’ applicant to the Red Cross. Publishing this letter in all major newspapers and magazines got the conversation started: journalists were intrigued by the unusual way of attracting new talent. The spokesperson of the Red Cross could tell their story more in-depth in press, tv, radio and online media.

The Strategy

The Red Cross is not top of mind as it comes to people’s professional careers. But in reality the Red Cross is a professional organization that also needs high level profiles in finance, management, IT, etc. We focused on the insight that higher profile companies receive a lot of resumes. Even though they come across several interesting resumes, they can never hire all applicants. By asking them to donate applicants to the Red Cross by an open letter, we sparked a conversation that put the Red Cross on the employer market, even for people seeking for a career challenge.