An Intro to BPS Brand

BPS Brand is a creative studio that focuses exclusively on employer brand and recruitment marketing. Enhance and activate your employer brand.

An Intro to BPS Brand

Enhance your employer brand through strategies you can actually activate

BPS Brand is a creative studio that focuses exclusively on employer brand and recruitment marketing.

At its heart, BPS is a global recruitment partner. However, since launching our Brand Studio in the mid-noughties we’ve also been obsessed with telling the stories of employers like you. Each one unique. And each one fuelled by strategy, branding, marketing and technology that produces tangible outcomes to attraction and retention.

This guide has been created to outline the key challenges we typically encounter. And how we continue to solve them for partners of all shapes and sizes across multiple industries.

Intro to BPS Brand

7 typical challenges we encounter

Failure to launch
Lacking a brand story
Hello product, where are the people?
Missing cultural code
Cross-cultural warfare
The struggle to scale
Bigger companies won’t play fair

What we do

Discovery
Collateral
Campaigns
Websites

How we deliver

Attraction Labs
The BPS Brand process

Creds & Portfolio

Case Study: Construction Journal
Case Study: The Progress Group
Case Study: Zyxel
The start-up
The disruptor
The fast-growing Fintech
The manufacturing giant

Intro to BPS Brand

There’s a lot of content being produced around the subject of employer brand and its associated terms. Most of it’s well-intentioned and some of it’s useful.

However, how relevant and applicable is the bulk of traditional employer brand methodology in today’s market?

Perceived wisdom will tell you that you must spend a lot of time and money developing an Employer Value Proposition and crafting an employer brand. This will often involve defining your messaging pillars, running endless focus groups, launching a shiny careers site, rolling-out a truckload of branded merchandise and then...all of your problems will be solved. It’ll be easier to attract the talent you need and your people will be happy. Right? Well, not really.

Put simply, attempting to adopt the hallmarks of this approach can be frustrating, exhausting and expensive.

This whole exercise can also be incredibly ineffective. Especially if you haven’t produced content that candidates care about or taken the time to create low-friction, high-impact candidate experiences.

It doesn’t have to be like this. There is a more iterative, agile, faster and more effective way to highlight why people should join your company and stay there.

Sure, key components matter. Messaging is important and destinations create credibility. But we recognise that not every company has an enterprise level budget or infinite resource to execute. Sometimes you’ve got to be scrappy and far more intentional in your approach.

In a nutshell, BPS Brand exists for the organisations that value creativity but are willing and prepared to break-away from the theory and get stuck into the doing.

William Geldart, BPS Brand Lead

7 typical challenges we encounter

Failure to launch

The problem:

You’ve put in the hard yards. You’ve got your exec team onboard, run focus groups, examined the competition, then produced your EVP and its shiny pillars. But now it’s simply collecting dust in a long-forgotten-about shared folder. What seemed like a fantastic idea has been de-prioritised and the project has lost momentum

The solution:

Getting an objective partner/employer brand agency onboard will help breathe new life into your employer brand strategy and get things off the ground. They'll work with your key stakeholders to revisit and define your brand story, before producing an actionable plan to activate the components that matter. However, the secret sauce lies in taking an iterative and more intentional approach to activation. Forget the bureaucracy, it's time to test, refine and distribute at scale.

Lacking a brand story
(there’s just nothing there)

The problem:

You know what your organisation does best but it’s never been articulated before. You might even have a set of values but they now appear to be outdated or out of step with the true reality of working for your business. Or in some cases, employer brand has never been on the agenda. This issue is particularly commonplace amongst fast-scaling companies that haven’t had the chance to pause for breath.

The solution:

Making time for collaborative strategy sessions will give you the space to define what it really means to work for your organisation. Every company has a story, and every individual will have their own interpretation. However, if you want to connect with in-demand talent you'll need to tease out the answers to these fundamental questions: "what do you make, who is it for, and why do they care?"

Hello product,
where are the people?

The problem:

Your balance sheet is healthy, business is steady, and you may have even picked-up some awards along the way. For your product(s) that is. However, something is missing and it’s becoming harder to attract the candidates you really need.

The solution:

Profit. Tick. Product. Tick. People…? If attraction (and/or retention) is proving difficult, it’s likely you’re lacking a key ingredient. By uncovering the people and stories that make your organisation successful, you can begin to ‘humanise’ your culture. In reality, this can be as simple as positioning your people as subject matter experts, showcasing the exciting projects they’re working on or by creating content-rich workflows and touchpoints that will educate the swathe of candidates lying dormant in your ATS.

Missing cultural code

The problem:

Employee engagement is low and an increasing number of employees are voting with their feet and leaving. You’ve taken pulse surveys and the responses indicate there’s a lack of transparency, autonomy, and communication within the organisation. Meanwhile, others have bemoaned the lack of cohesiveness and connection to what they’re doing.

The solution:

Explore new ways to get to the root of the problem. Begin by re-evaluating your existing engagement frameworks and tease out familiar trends. From here, you can begin to distil the issues at hand and establish feedback loops that will continually address the feelings that exist. Ultimately, you want to get to a position where you can start taking proactive action and take a more segmented and personalised approach to engagement.

Cross cultural warfare

The problem:

You’re projecting an image of being one, big, happy team. But ‘x’ office likes to do things their way while ‘y’ office (or team) has its own distinct micro culture. Your initial desire might be to stamp this out. But there is another way…

The solution:

The fix doesn’t have to involve browbeating your employees around a wholly unified culture or company image. You can be authentic and celebrate the micro cultures that exist while retaining your ‘North Star’. Give your employees the autonomy they might desire and access to tools that’ll help them promote what’s going on in their world. Think about producing team Medium blogs, targeted induction events and industry/product-specific content that’s centered around your employee experience.

The struggle to scale

The problem:

The Marketing team is swamped and employer brand is just one line item on an extremely busy HR colleague’s agenda. It’s not that you’re lacking in ideas or inspiration. A recent ‘behind-the-scenes’ video went down well but there aren’t enough hours in the day to scale and fulfil your ambitions.

The solution:

Taking on additional agency resource can help you hit short or long-term goals within an agreed timeframe. Working with a partner that understands how you operate and what you want to achieve provides a flexible and scalable solution to taking on more permanent resource, while also providing you with more ideas and content to fuel your employer brand.

Bigger companies
won’t play fair

The problem:

You’re a cool company and you look after your people well. But not many people know who you are. And on your doorstep is a big, multi-national beast that’s hoovering up the local talent pool. It’s leaving you stretched and hampering your own growth goals.

The solution:

Aside from diversifying your pool of available candidates (offer more remote roles, greater flexible working conditions etc), enhancing your employer brand can pay big dividends. And being ‘smaller’ can be a huge advantage. You’re more agile and there’s less red-tape and enterprise-level noise to cut through before content sign-off and employer brand projects. Meaning you can begin to create and establish presence within your marketplace.

And the list goes on…

These are just a few of the typical pain points we encounter. Through our BPS Labs process we’ll unpick the challenges you’re facing. Before presenting back actionable strategies and solutions to overcome your biggest employer brand hurdles.

Tell me more about BPS Labs

What we do

Discovery

You need a solid plan but don’t know where to begin. You need an agency that can really get under the skin of your business and show you how you stack up to the competition. All before co-creating a strategy that’ll ensure you win the employer brand battle.

Collateral

Your competitors have better job specs, use video and line their candidate experience with engaging content. How do you catch-up? Where do you begin? We get into the very fabric of your business to build on your EVP and create collateral that will truly resonate with your ideal hires.

Campaigns

You want the best people but the job boards simply aren’t delivering. It’s time to do something different or risk losing out on the candidates you really want. How? We’ll work with you to get laser focused in your approach. By personalising every step of your journey we guarantee you’ll get better results when scouring the market.

Websites

Your online destinations require depth and character. Because without a robust digital landscape you'll always be behind the curve. We can build or refine existing talent sites to showcase your brand and improve the candidate experience from the very first interaction.

OK, so why should I trust BPS?

• Because rather than indulge in self-congratulatory back-slapping (“look at our amazing employer brand!”), we focus on outcomes.

• We help recruiters do their job more effectively, by providing ideas and content that candidates care about.

• We start consultative but soon get active. You tell us your story – warts and all – and we’ll create the narrative, creative and platforms for you to engage both potential and existing employees.

How we deliver

AttractionLab

This is for HR teams who:

Want to improve candidate quality and build their talent pool.
Are eager to enhance their candidate application process.
Need a standout EVP that really speaks to the people they desire.

Typical pain points...

The quality of your candidates is lower than required.
You aren’t the employer of choice.
You have the basics of an employer brand but it needs depth.
You’re struggling to align the organisation to your EVP.
Your technology is failing to enhance the candidate experience.
Your careers site isn’t working hard enough to convert candidates.
You need a recruitment marketing strategy.
You’re too reliant on job boards.
You lack a social response strategy and your brand perception is suffering.

Typical outcomes...

An understanding of what ‘best in class’ employer brand looks like.
Creative recruitment marketing ideas.
A benchmark against your competitors.
How to create and lead with candidate personas.
Ideas to improve your candidate experience.
Creation of an employer brand toolkit and collateral.

The Process

What we'd do

Our Brand process is simple. We typically begin with an Attraction Lab, a collaborative workshop where you’ll have the space and a team of experts available to hone in on the key attraction challenge you’re facing.

From there, we can work with you to start capturing the essence of your employer brand, playback and begin the activation process.
Desired outcomes might include:

C-Suite alignment on your new EVP/employer brand.
Definition of what makes a great Yell employee.
An evaluation of your candidate experience and ideas
for improvement.
Creative ideas around campaigns.
Development of key attraction messaging.
A roadmap for future success.

Creds & Portfolio

Case Study: Construction Journal

The Challenge

The Construction Journal is a SaaS business, supplying key information on construction bids to relevant customers across the United States.
CJ is undergoing a period of significant organic growth. However, it has largely exhausted its traditional recruitment channels (mainly referrals). This has created a requirement to make its talent brand work harder to attract fresh candidates.
A perception problem exists. Negative sentiment on Glassdoor is distorting the company’s image and hampering recruitment efforts.

The Results

The BPS Labs process helped the CJ Exec Team frame their brand narrative and bring to life its founder story.
The BPS Brand team developed concepts and creative that complimented what already exists, while enhancing CJ’s image as a leading SaaS organisation.
Creation of external and internal brand concepts designed for quick implementation.
Formulation of brand pillars designed to create a consistent set of messaging for attraction, retention, and in response to negative reviews.

Case Study: The Progress Group

The Challenge

The Progress Group is a leading education and training provider, based in the United Kingdom.
The collective Group has grown rapidly through acquisitions. This has created a disjointed brand image and acknowledged capability gaps in recruitment process and procedure.
Broad and stretched remits necessitated the need to look for outside support to hit growth targets.
TPG required the creation of an online and social media campaign strategy to amplify its talent attraction.

The Results

We successfully played back our understanding of TPG’s brand architecture and gave ideas for how this can be simplified within a talent brand context.
We produced campaign concepts focussed on both the Group and its alternative education subsidiary. These showcased our creative capability, while also demonstrating a multi-channel approach to candidate attraction and user experience.
We demonstrated what good recruitment practice looks like and presented solutions to aligning the Group and its subsidiaries’ recruitment framework.

Case Study: Zyxel

The Challenge

Zyxel is a worldwide manufacturer of networking devices, with its main offices in Asia, Europe and North America.
Intense competition from bigger brands was making it difficult for Zyxel to meet its growth demands and expand in key areas.
Zyxel required end-to-end assistance, including: talent brand conceptualisation, brand pillar development, campaign ideas, digital collateral and advertising strategy.

The Results

We worked with the Zyxel team to establish a talent brand framework and messaging that would help them establish their position within a fierce marketplace.
Focussing on Zyxel's role in building connections, we developed talent brand pillars that would compliment their consumer brand.
As well as fitting Zyxel's global image, we produced campaigns and assets with the flexibility to appeal to localised candidate pools.

The start-up

MindFeedr was conceptualised, built, and delivered to market in less than three months during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. An unprecedented national lockdown had caused significant disruption to schooling and created a gap in the education marketplace. This was principally amongst younger learners whose needs were not widely served by existing online tutoring services. We were involved in the end-to-end design and build of a product that connected passionate teaching assistants with children eager to learn. The brand and messaging had to be clear and multi-faceted to appeal to its key target audiences – teaching assistants, parents and children.

The disruptor

WIZZ Air is Europe’s fastest-growing low-cost airline and one of the modern day success stories within the aviation industry. However, its brand perception and recognition lagged behind its more established competitors. Meanwhile, its UK subsidiary wanted to tailor its brand approach to cater for local demand and increase engagement amongst its workforce. Our collaboration with the UK senior executive team resulted in us presenting WIZZ with a brand golden thread, directional framework and digital collateral. This was designed to elevate both the consumer and talent brands, while also enhancing regional presence and reach through targeted channels (Facebook, Instagram and TikTok).

The fast-growing Fintech

Aspirational Fintech startup, 4Finance, grow from zero to 25 countries in 3 years. BPS pieced together the initial brand as viewed at https://www.4finance.com and then managed their global staffing from Executives through central engineering, finance, legal functions through to the country heads and the in country teams. The organisation was struggling to scale fast enough because bigger names were hoovering up local tech talent. To build greater credibility and differentiate itself from the competition, 4Finance then required the creation of a compelling brand proposition. We worked alongside the 4Finance team to continue develop in country brand concepts that captured 4F’s exciting growth story, defined its ‘tribe’ culture and ultimately acted as a magnet to ideal candidates.

The manufacturing
giant

Devro is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of collagen casings for food products. The business was ticking both the ‘product’ and ‘profit’ boxes through a series of acquisitions. However, a crucial element was missing – ‘people’. A disparate and disconnected workforce had created micro-cultures throughout the company and were holding onto their original identity. We were challenged with creating a unifying brand image and message. This was designed to have pan-global appeal, encapsulate a Group mentality and shared purpose, while also serving to trump regional tribalism.

Meet the team

William Geldart – Brand Lead

William is the Brand (and Labs) Lead at BPS World, working alongside HR and C-Suite leaders to help them solve their biggest attraction challenges.

Having come from a B2C digital marketing background, William has spent the last four years working in employer brand and recruitment marketing.

William specialises in messaging, tone of voice, content ideation and creation. He is passionate about driving innovation and better outcomes in the employer brand space.

Claire Greenwood – Head of Creative

Claire is the creative brain behind BPS Brand and one of the studio’s founding members.

Utilising over 20 years’ experience, Claire’s vision and versatility shines through.

Her strong agency background includes working with clients in the in the automotive, FMCG and IT space, helping them to bring alive their brand stories.