SAVE FOR AWARDS. THE UNDERCOVER RECRUITMENT AD

TitleSAVE FOR AWARDS. THE UNDERCOVER RECRUITMENT AD
BrandINNOCEAN BERLIN
Product/ServiceRECRUITMENT
Category G02. Challenger Brand
Entrant INNOCEAN WORLDWIDE EUROPE Berlin, GERMANY
Idea Creation INNOCEAN WORLDWIDE EUROPE Berlin, GERMANY
PR INNOCEAN WORLDWIDE EUROPE Berlin, GERMANY
Credits
Name Company Position
Gabriel Mattar INNOCEAN Worldwide Europe GmbH European CCO
Ricardo Wolff INNOCEAN Worldwide Europe GmbH ECD
Pedro Lourenco INNOCEAN Worldwide Europe GmbH Senior Copywriter
José Gomes INNOCEAN Worldwide Europe GmbH Senior Art Director
Goncalo Martinho INNOCEAN Worldwide Europe GmbH Art Director
Antonio Neto INNOCEAN Worldwide Europe GmbH Copywriter
José Gomes INNOCEAN Worldwide Europe GmbH Senior Art Director
Carlos Suárez Freelancer Motion Designer
Leticia Rial Ungaro INNOCEAN Worldwide Europe GmbH Senior Corporate Strategy & Planning Manager
Jeesoo Kim INNOCEAN Worldwide Europe GmbH Trainee Corporate Strategy

Why is this work relevant for Direct?

We sneaked a recruitment ad straight into Photoshop to attract the creatives who used it every day. How Direct is that?! Save for Awards uses an often-overlooked Photoshop feature (scripts) and combines it with an insight that is familiar to every young creative out there: preparing work for award shows is boring and extremely time-consuming. By creating a simple piece of software that automatically generates all the formats required by every major award show, we were able to gain the creatives’ hearts and make their lives easier, right before daring them to come work with us.

Background

In 2019, Innocean was just launching its Berlin office. But as a fairly unknown agency and with very little work to show under our name, we were having a hard time recruiting top creative talent.

Describe the creative idea (30% of vote)

We created a Photoshop plug-in to help ambitious creatives - the kind we wanted to hire - prepare their award show entries. A script that automatically resizes and converts the original print ads or presentation boards into all the files one needs to enter to every award show out there, in seconds. But here’s the catch. This plug-in was also a trojan horse designed to talk to award-hungry creatives directly under their bosses' noses and ask them to join Innocean Berlin.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

A small and new agency like Innocean stands no chance against the big names out there when it comes to attracting top talent. So we had to be smart and sneaky, and approach our target directly, in a creative and unusual way. We first tried to win their hearts, by creating something cool and innovative that would make their lives a whole lot easier. Once we had their undivided attention, we delivered our recruitment message - inside Photoshop, right when they were preparing to submit their work to award shows.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

The plug-in was - and still is - available for free at www.saveforawards.com . It includes specs for all major award shows, and trade websites/publications like Luerzer’s Archive, Best Ads on TV, Ads of The World, etc. The campaign promoting the plug-in ran on Innocean’s social media channels. Tailor-made ads were created specifically for Adeevee, Ads of The World, Luerzer’s Archive and Best Ads on TV and entered as creative work, not ads.

List the results (30% of vote)

Due to popular demand, we created a version 2.0 that included even more festivals and also media like Luerzer’s Archive, Adeevee, Ads of The World, Communication Arts, etc. To date, the plug-in has been downloaded more than 1700 times, in 47 countries. Thanks to this plug-in, 3 new teams left big agencies like Africa, DDB, Jung von Matt and VML/Y&R and started at Innocean Berlin in July 2019. Not bad for an underdog agency.

Please tell us about the challenger brand and how your campaign challenged / was different from your competitors

The Save For Awards plug-in got wide coverage in trade media from around the world. Global CCOs from other agencies shared our plug-in with their entire network, not realizing that they were actually helping us poach their talent (sorry, not sorry).