The Client:
Our client is an American cloud-computing company focused on pharmaceutical and life sciences industry applications. Headquartered in Pleasanton, California, and at the heart of Silicon Valley solutions, it also has offices and remote workers around the country. They support Pharmaceutical/Life Science companies.
Our client was working with an Ohio-based, unique, private economic development organization to grow their Columbus office. During this time, it was discovered that our client was in need of a segmented Employer Value Proposition to showcase their Columbus location. We leveraged our relationship with this development corporation and introduced them to our tspSTORYTELLER solution, EVP Accelerator, which was just what their client needed.
We worked in partnership with both organizations to deliver the client’s segmented EVP.
Here’s How We Were Able to Create an Employer Value Proposition Statement That Would Inspire All Talent Attraction:
- The client was planning a large recruitment event at their Columbus office in partnership with the Ohio-based development organization. They needed specific messaging and language to attract the right talent to their local opportunities and brand. The national brand is already very well-known and quite impressive, but they wanted something segmented for the local culture to share what makes the Columbus location special. They were specifically seeking a new employer value proposition statement that would inspire all talent attraction assets and storytelling, inclusive of visuals, copy, and an email campaign.
- The support they needed was unique, as our team needed to stay aligned to their brand holistically while speaking to unique attributes of one area of the country. Additionally, this local workforce isn’t completely office-based. Our client’s employees have complete flexibility to work at the office, at home, or elsewhere. This presented the challenge of attracting new talents to a local office while also attracting them to the flexibility of working from home – on top of ensuring that not being at the headquarters would never stunt their career growth.
- We extensively researched the culture, opportunities, management style, and more by analyzing and interpreting 15 in-depth employee interviews plus hundreds of employee survey results. We pulled common themes from the employees’ perspective, determined the strongest attributes of what makes working at our client’s Columbus office special, and delivered an executive summary of our findings.
- We strategically created a controlled but flexible environment by offering multiple options we believed in, but gave the client room to select their favorite to move forward with.
- Once we ensured the client’s alignment/confirmation of these findings to be true, we created three EVP statements as options for them to select from. We dove into the largest driving themes and presented three distinct choices to emote a spectrum of audience responses. Themes of “purpose and impact,” “teammate,” and “thrive in purpose.” Providing them with multiple perspectives allowed their leadership stakeholders to envision what is true for Columbus employees in a tangible way. Having a choice made them feel involved and part of the process, which they appreciated.
- Once the EVP statement was selected and finalized, it became the cornerstone of their employer brand campaign, and we decided to take a similar approach and provided them with two options with varied concepts to choose from. Theme 1 spoke to their “work from anywhere” policy, and theme two appealed to talent passionate about working within the industry. They liked both options so much that they could not seem to decide. Because we were impressed with the partnership, we ultimately gifted them with both campaigns as a “thank you.”
- With the campaign, we conducted R&D by familiarizing ourselves with current branding trends and integrating a unique technique called glass morphism into our assets while also capitalizing on location icons and social media-inspired notification-like visuals. With the client being an innovative, technologically savvy Silicon Valley client, we felt that utilizing design techniques that lean visually cutting-edge would appeal to them, and they did.
- In addition to the messaging and creative assets, we created a three-part email campaign for our client. These emails were designed to be sent in waves to interested talent. They consisted of enticing language, employee video links, cultural messaging, and insight into who they are as an organization. The email campaign perfectly housed all aspects of the EVP Accelerator project work we delivered.
- This project was tspSTORYTELLER’s first-ever full EVP Accelerator delivery for a major national brand. We experienced a seamless process that was a productive, positive partnership for all teams involved. Our client was thrilled with the outcome, and we too, felt like we hit the jackpot with a client who trusted and believed in us to deliver such foundational storytelling to support their employer brand.
Challenges We Faced & How We Overcame Them
- Typically, for EVP Accelerator projects, we conduct focus groups with the client’s employees to ensure we are gathering authentic employee insight in a neutral environment, but this client had just recently conducted “Best Places to Work” surveys and did not want to ask for more time from their team.
- We spent several hours sifting through extensive employee documentation and highlighting impressive or surprising details/insights. We did this separately first, then came together internally to ensure we were aligned on what stood out to us. This helped dictate themes while creating more of a guarantee for the accuracy of interpretation.
- At the beginning of our partnership, we found that receiving timely feedback from the client was a challenge, especially considering the tight deadline we were up against. This challenge was short-lived and resolved promptly.
- We effectively communicated our deadlines, and after a few follow-up opportunities, the client improved their review and response times.
- Throughout this project, we were working with multiple stakeholders. Getting everyone aligned on creative work is extremely challenging, as it is often up to personal interpretation.
- We overcame this challenge by presenting options for the stakeholders to select from created discourse and creative conversation where they could discuss why they were drawn to certain storytelling or visuals. Once they heard from one another, building trust and confirmation, and after listening to our recommendations, they could more easily decide together as a collective group.
- After the project kick-off, our team was informed of an updated timeline that had been rapidly cut short. The development organization asked that our originally anticipated 13-week project be delivered in 7 weeks.
Client Quotes
“[TSP] provided excellent communication, superior services, and deliverables. [You were] pleasant and friendly, over-delivered for the client, [had] great attention to detail with client feedback, [and provided] great project and timeline management.”
– Talent Marketing Manager and Account Project Manager
“[I enjoyed] the team I worked with at TSP and the level of client satisfaction that came out of the project. [I also enjoyed] the professionalism and warmth of the team and the creative excellence and unique ideas.”
– Talent Marketing Manager and Account Project Manager
“[We are] very satisfied [due to the] excellent creative assets, quick process, and [that you] actually listened to the client.”
– Talent Marketing Manager and Account Project Manager
