Merkle 'curious' recruitment drive aims to lure newbies

Dentsu agency Merkle is taking an unusual approach to recruiting new talent by launching a brand campaign, designed to highlight the curious nature of its people and attract newbies to the data-driven marketing industry.

Dubbed ‘Me in MErkle’, the campaign initially launches across digital out of home (DOOH) and paid media. It asks the question: “Curious?” and then invites people to click on a digital ad or scan a QR code from the poster site to take them to the website, to read an ode to Merkle about what it means to be a good fit for the company.

The orange ads, reflecting Merkle’s new branding launched earlier this year, will initially run in London, as well as other key cities, such as Edinburgh and Manchester, over the coming weeks. The Me in MErkle idea will run across all internal and external comms in the UK and EMEA as a wrapper across its employee engagement activity.

The campaign is designed to attract a wider audience of potential candidates who may not have considered a career in marketing.

Following its launch across poster sites and online, the campaign will roll out across industry sponsorships, including this week’s DMA Awards. As the DMA’s Industry Talent Partner, Merkle will also host Alice in Wonderland-themed cocktails at the event inviting people to “Drink ME”.

This will be followed by an EMEA-wide social media campaign and further out of home and digital activity over the next six months, as well as internal comms activity to bring together all its EMEA business across its 14 markets within its DACH, Northern Europe and UK business clusters.

Developed inhouse as a cross collaboration project between Dentsu’s media and Merkle/CXM divisions, the creative was developed by Jason Fletcher and Jo Webb, the executive creative director and creative director at Merkle B2B, supported by their creative department. Out of home was booked by Posterscope. PPC and programmatic was handled by Merkle’s media practice.

Merkle UK chief executive Anne Stagg said: “The ME in MErkle campaign is a unifying idea that helps communicate the energy and personality that is so unique to our business.

“The bold orange ads reflect our energy and ambition and the Curious creative idea in our ad campaign goes right to the heart of one of the many behaviours that we see day in day out in our business and in our mission to help clients deliver a total customer experience.”