Company: Deloitte & Touche USA
Agency: MWW Group
Timeframe: 2007
According to a recent study conducted by Rainmaker Thinking Inc., Generation Y is the fastest-growing population in the workforce, representing 22% of all employees. By 2010,
approximately 10 million more Gen Y-ers are expected to join the workforce, outnumbering their predecessors. However, numbers can be deceiving, as this group's ubiquity doesn't
mean that Gen Y-ers are easy to pin down. On the contrary, they are posing major talent management challenges to managers who must revise their strategies for recruiting and
retaining this elusive group of young professionals.
To recruit Gen Y-ers to its organization, accounting firm Deloitte & Touche USA's communications team knew that an innovative approach that would resonate with them would
be essential to success. Seeing how reality TV, social media and mobile messaging have all become predominant influences in shaping the perceptions of this generation, Deloitte
executives gravitated toward the idea of using online video as a way to connect with and engage them on an emotional level. It was out of this notion that the "What's Your
Deloitte?" film festival was born.
Video Killed Traditional HR
According to Dana Muldrow, manager of public relations for Deloitte & Touche, the idea for the film festival initially came from one of the firm's partners.
"We thought creating this program would give Gen Y-ers the opportunity to apply the same things they're interested in doing extracurricular-wise to what they can do in the work
environment," she says.
Substantial research, including findings from The Society for Human Resource Management's 2007 Job Satisfaction Survey, which reported that overall culture is "very important"
to more than one-third (36%) of respondents, gave the film festival concept additional impetus. However, the films for this unique festival would come from aspiring auteurs in
Deloitte's own workforce, rather than from the likes of Scorsese, the Coen brothers and Tarantino.
In January 2007, a committee was formed to shape the festival's development and implementation. During brainstorming sessions, committee members wrestled with a spate of
questions that dealt with how to make the festival effective and how to make it something employees would want to do in their spare time. Without answers to these questions, the
initiative would fall flat.
Bringing The Idea Into Focus
Next, the project team needed to find a subject that would give the videos a general theme and focus. They also needed help in formulating how the videos would be used in the
overall recruiting process.
As Deloitte does a lot of recruiting on college campuses nationwide, HR representative are invariably asked by interested applicants the same question: "What is it like to work
at Deloitte?"
This became the peg for the initiative, with "What's Your Deloitte?" being identified as the theme. In this context, the team encouraged employees to make short (three minutes)
films expressing the organization's culture and values in their own voices. What was particularly interesting--and poignant--for Muldrow on an engagement level was the wide-open
age range of employees who participated in the film festival.
"We had participants from across various generations," says Muldrow. "We were excited to see folks at the senior level work with interns."
And, even though the program did not start off as a PR initiative, it quickly evolved into one, as media outreach was needed to get the word out about the program and to entice
Gen Y-ers to seek out work opportunities within the organization.
Finding The Supporting Actors
MWW Group, which had already established a working relationship with Deloitte, soon entered the picture. They would play a key role in strategizing and refining the goals and
tactics of the campaign. Also important to the agency's execs was developing an understanding of the framework and tone of the program, along with the current state of the
accounting profession.
"[Our involvement] was to support and augment recruitment efforts for Deloitte," recalls Joe Cohen, VP, MWW. "There is a talent crunch in the accounting industry, because
there's a tremendous amount of competition for young talent. Part of this program was to help position Deloitte as an exciting and fulfilling place to start a career in
accounting, and also to help retain personnel."
But it wasn't just familiarity that prompted Deloitte to bring MWW into the fold. It was something else MWW had up their sleeves, which Deloitte knew they could leverage to
their advantage.
"We knew about their strong digital media expertise," explains Muldrow. "They're also strong in consumer marketing as well." And, as a B2B organization that often relies on
orthodox communications methodologies, Deloitte needed some assistance in learning how to think in terms of appealing to its target audience through nontraditional tools.
In early May 2007, the planning portion of the campaign. MWW was assigned the task of media outreach. Because the program itself was unique, the outreach had to be creative as
well.
"The campaign [Tom Biro, VP, new media strategies at the MWW Group, and I] led was a multi-pronged program that focused on outreach targeting, both traditional and online
media--as well as the blogosphere," says Cohen.
"We wanted to go beyond traditional print and broadcast media," says Muldrow. "We looked at ways to leverage blogs, online outlets and other tools like Twitter or YouTube." The
latter user-generated space is where MWW's expertise came heavily into play.
Take 2
Pitching to media outlets and getting reporters to understand what the program was about were challenges for the project team.
"At first, it looked like another internal communications program, except this time we were using video," says Muldrow. "But it was challenging for us to get people to see that
this was more than just video--it was a larger program to get people engaged."
Another difficulty was identifying who exactly were the right reporters to target, particularly those employed in traditional media. "A lot of media reporters write about HR,
recruiting and digital media, but there was no one who was covering the entire gamut of what we were doing," Muldrow says.
To overcome this, the team invited reporters to view and participate in the process firsthand. "We embedded them into the judging process," she relates. "[They saw] what the
contents of the videos were, and that drove a lot of the coverage."
"No one had done anything like this before," says Cohen. "We were the first to launch this program on this scale within this profession. We wanted to make sure that we were
able to show that the accounting profession could be a fun, exciting and highly stimulating place to start a career contrary to popular perceptions that it was only about numbers-
crunching."
To further generate coverage of the festival, MWW created and distributed a multimedia press release in which a few of the entrants' videos were embedded. For Muldrow, this was
a turning point for the PR portion of the campaign. "The media was able to get our tone. That tool helped set the stage for our media activity around the film festival."
Aaaand, Action
Teams of Deloitte personnel from nationwide offices submitted 400 short films for the festival, which began June 15, 2007, and ran until the end of that September. Each video
offered a candid glimpse into the workings of the Deloitte culture, which places a heavy premium on innovation and leading-edge talent.
To encourage maximum participation, the team offered film production kits to the first 250 registrants. Interest in the project grew so quickly that Deloitte made an additional
100 cameras available.
The submitted films were posted on an internal YouTube-like intranet site, where they were viewed and rated by Deloitte employees. To showcase Deloitte's commitment to
innovation, in combination with the creativity and passion of its employees, the best films would be integrated into campus recruiting programs.
After winnowing the entries to 14 finalists, the panel of judges (comprised of Deloitte's senior leadership, the company's head of U.S. campus recruiting and several Gen Y
employees) awarded prizes to Deloitte's top three "producers." The first place winner received a cash prize and was eligible to take a trip to the Sundance Film Festival. The
second and third place winners also received cash prizes and were eligible for trips to either Los Angeles or New York.
Tallying Box Office Sales
When asked to quantify the ROI in terms of how many Gen Y-ers joined the Deloitte workforce within the last year, Muldrow said she'd have to wait until the end of the year to
provide an accurate figure; however, the 40 million media impressions are an early indication of success.
Plus, last fall, BusinessWeek named Deloitte the No. 1 company for launching a career, using the Deloitte Film Festival as a springboard for its determination. Muldrow
notes that the writer of that piece was one of the reporters who had participated and had been embedded in the judging process. Media coverage also extended to other outlets
including the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and myriad accounting trade publications. Among the blogs that covered the film festival were
BrandAutopsy and CollegeRecruiter.com.
For Muldrow, a key lesson learned from the PR portion of the program was giving the media access to help it drive and develop the story. "We found that a lot of our success was
from inviting media to participate in the judging process. We learned quite a bit about working with digital media and with blogs--identifying who the influential bloggers were in
the space we were trying to reach."
Also, for a program like this to be successful, it was imperative that the traditional and new media teams worked in tandem, notes Cohen. "A major reason why this campaign was
successful was that we led a truly integrated effort," he says. "This was a program that was cohesive in that the internal communications effort was paired with both the online
and traditional effort from start to finish." PRN
CONTACTS:
Dana Muldrow [email protected], Joe Cohen, [email protected]
Everybody's Doing It
Dana Muldrow, manager of PR for Deloitte & Touche, and Joe Cohen, VP of MWW, offer these simple best practices to companies seeking to implement a similar initiative
designed to attract greater engagement among employees while attracting new employees:
"Don't be afraid to try [an initiative like the Deloitte Film Festival]. It was a large project to undertake," says Muldrow. "[But if your company launches a similar one],
you'll be surprised at the level of participation."
Cohen feels audience research and targeting are also essential. "It's critical that you keep your messaging consistent. In a program with many audiences, both within Deloitte
as well as many different types of media outlets ranging from the Wall Street Journal to campus newsletters, we had the same messaging but [they were customized]
appropriately to each audience."
Also, if you're launching a program that has a social media component, you need to remember that the press will act quickly, adds Cohen. "Make sure you have your ducks in order
when you're ready to launch."