Johnson and Johnson was seeking to develop a new employer brand for talent acquisition that would build upon its new True North strategy and further push authenticity, differentiation, and relevance within a competitive market.
Increasingly, talent is seeking to work at large tech companies such as Google and AirBnB; younger talent in particular does not view Johnson and Johnson as the innovation leader that it is. We needed to target three levels of potential employees (early talent, professionals, and executives) to tell J&J’s story in a compelling way and elevate recruitment by modernizing the existing brand. To achieve success, we needed to meet the following business objectives:
Breakthrough by reimagining talent acquisition; increasing consideration, preference and conversion over traditional, tech, and highly visible consumer brands.
Create consistency by providing simple tools to drive impact and consistency; incorporating flexibility for global application.
Establish category leadership by elevating J&J and the industry; contemporizing the brand through a global perspective; highlighting J&J’s capability for transformation.
Personalize by building a relationship and connection with recruits; establishing expectations and making content relevant for each target; telling stories that matter.
We worked closely with J&J’s PR team to understand the new True North Brand strategy, and the two potential territories that could bring it to life: Amplify Your Impact at J&J, and Your Next Move Could Mean the Next Breakthrough. We identified voice principles, an elevator pitch, and principles for tailoring content to each of the talent acquisition team’s key audiences: early talent, professionals, and executives.
From there, we brainstormed creative concepts to explore in-depth that would dial up different aspects of the two strategic territories.
After workshopping the concepts with our client team, we modified them and explored how they could come to life visually (two examples are shown below).
Each was presented with a concept statement and unique objectives, 4 sample touchpoints that outline distinct visual elements, and design principles to establish clarity and push the concepts apart.
We maintained J&J’s new palette and typography throughout, but leveraged scale, color proportion, shape, photography, and layering to offer distinct options.