We understand that where they work matters to teenagers. There’s pride, and that's fuelled by what they see at school and on social media. They want to assert themselves and stand out, to be a big fish in a small pond. They want to (be able to) show, hear and feel who they are. Furthermore, they are culturally engaged. And that is not surprising, because every day they are exposed to countless media impressions.
By understanding mainstream youth culture, we were able to position ourselves within that culture. And by making conscious choices in media, language, music, and clothing, we made ourselves credible.
A word used in youth culture is "pluses". That's about multiplying money, making more and more. Someone who pluses is also called a 'plusser'. Mula B released a song about this in 2016, it has become a commonly used term recent years. This insight became our hook. One word is enough to show that PLUS is the place to earn your money. Close to PLUS' identity. And teens.
And so identified our starting point, 'Working at PLUS gives me a richer social life' to our campaign message 'Become a PLUSSER', where the focus is on the developing social aspect.
Together with production company UHU, we shot a 15" video and the key visual of the campaign in a PLUS store in the evening. With a cast of (partly) real PLUS employees, to strengthen the team feeling. And in order to seamlessly connect the campaign to all the other expressions that teenagers are presented with day in and day out via social media, a sleek visual style was used, inspired by popular clothing brands.
In-house we developed a dedicated, low-key landing page and a 6-week media campaign: a pilot with a dozen PLUS stores, aimed at a young target group, deployed via Instagram (incl. stories), YouTube Shorts, Snapchat and TikTok. Where possible, we used age targeting, interest targeting and location targeting around the participating stores.
"We thought it was exciting because this campaign was so different. We relied on your expertise and rightly so, as the results demonstrate. We are very proud and hope to be able to roll out this refreshing campaign nationwide in the long term."
Lynn Slabbers, Campaign Coordinator Social
Both PLUS and its entrepreneurs reacted positively to the campaign style and supported the concept. They were happy with this "refreshing" recruitment campaign that was much more in line with the target group than previous recruitment campaigns. The end result: 178 applicants in 6 weeks for a dozen PLUS stores. And that gave them a taste for more.
The success of the first campaign gave us the opportunity to roll the campaign out nationally. In a future national roll-out, the campaign will also be extended on the shop floor by using window notes with QR codes (for parents) and we will be even closer to the target group with digital and analogue screens in and around schools (for the teenagers).
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