An award winning recruitment campaign to attract more women and young people to work at GCHQ.
The challenge
GCHQ, the UK’s intelligence and security organisation, asked us to help with a recruitment campaign to attract more women and young people. Ordinary people work at GCHQ and you don’t need to be a spy. We had to break stereotypes and reach people from different walks of life to prove that every #JourneyToGCHQ is different.
The solution
Working with the team at Design102 I designed an Instagram campaign that celebrated the varied career paths of current GCHQ employees. Each person had their own friendly avatar to accompany their career milestones and personal highlights. I used cartoon graphics, lively animations and fun music to break stuffy stereotypes and motivate new people to apply.
The Results
Since the campaign went live:
GCHQ’s Instagram following has increased from 9,000 to 13,500 – well above the 10,000 target
the gender split between followers has levelled out from 70/30 male/female to 57/43, with a spike in the number of women aged 18–27 following the channel
4,767 people clicked on the sponsored ads
the campaign was picked up by national news outlets
in 2019 the campaign won a Digital Communications Award in the Recruiting and Employer Branding category, against an incredible 6,000 other applicants
