Title	DEAR CEO, DONATE AN APPLICANT
Brand	RED CROSS FLANDERS
Product/Service	EMPLOYER BRANDING
Category	A08. 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.

Campaign Success

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.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

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.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

The Red Cross struggles to find the right talent for their vacant positions. The aim was to attract a higher number of qualitative profiles. The campaign started with an unusual call for donations. The CEO of the Red Cross published an open letter: instead of money or blood, he asked his fellow CEO’s to donate capable, but ‘unused’ applicants. On an online donation platform, CEO’s could leave the contacts of interesting profiles to the Red Cross. In a second phase, the donation platform was also open for the general public to donate talented applicants in their network.

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.