Epix Media: Now recruiting creative paw-fessionals

Many of you saw our recruitment campaign which we launched on Saturday 1^st April, and I’m sure you all realised it was an April Fools! Each year we think about campaigns we can run that align with certain holidays and celebrations and for 1^st April our graphic designer came up with this fun campaign that gets across the message that “we’re hiring”.

At Epix we have high standards for our creative talent and started thinking about the other ways we could find those great people. Then we asked: “Why do they have to be people…?”. The answer was: “Couldn’t they be dogs?”.

We loved the idea that man’s best friend could be an unrecognised creative genius!

How it began

The first thing to create was a series of Linkedin and Twitter profiles for the paw-fessionals that we had already hired. We were a little naughty and in the weeks leading up to April 1^st Jacqueline Russell, Grant Dane and Jermaine Sheppard burst onto the internet, gaining new followers and developing connections.

We then shot a mini-documentary video with members of the team talking about our latest recruit, which starts with a serious tone before Jacqueline’s true identity was revealed. Filming with a dog was a challenge but huge fun, and we followed the RSPCA’s guidance on filming with animals to ensure welfare was monitored at all times. Our Director Will found writing an Animal Welfare Risk Assessment far too enjoyable… The video ends with a message that “We’re hiring humans too” to round back to our key message.

The edited video was posted onto a special recruitment page on our website, accessed by a dedicated URL (www.epixcareers.co.uk). Underneath this was some extra treats, including job ads specially for dogs with info on perks such as unlimited office treats and regular fetch breaks (leading people back to the real human job ads!).

The big reveal

Then all we had to do on Saturday 1^st April was tell everyone! The campaign was teased slightly via Twitter on Friday 31^st March, then on the Saturday we tweeted, posted on LinkedIn and Instagram via our official accounts and reached out wider through messages via our canine recruits, real life team and asked a few careers-based buddies very nicely (thanks @UoLCareers) to share our messages on Twitter and Facebook to students of the University of Lincoln.

The reaction

The response has been great: in the last 2 days we’ve had applications for our real human jobs (and even a couple for our canine jobs too), over 5,500 impressions on Twitter, 1,500 views on LinkedIn who were mostly 2^nd + degree connections and our website saw an 600% increase in traffic.

We’re hoping to see these results increase as people act upon our recruitment call – please feel free to share the page and help us find some new team members!

April Fools campaigns are a great way for brands to engage with their audiences in a fresh, fun way. If you’d like to explore ideas for your brand for April 2018 get in touch!

Take a look at our most recent job post (for humans) »