SOCIAL MEDIA
A PRIZED CAMPAIGN
Following their double win at the AGR Awards earlier this year, Ernst and Young (EY) were recently invited to speak at the first of the AGR’s social media workshops about their ground-breaking ‘prize-tagging’ Facebook campaign. With its high engagement and huge number of ‘likes’, the campaign has set a serious benchmark in social media recruitment. Myrto Kalle, Ernst and Young’s Recruitment Marketing Officer explains how the campaign worked and why it was so successful…
>> EY In Numbers T
he prize-tagging competition was part of an overall brand awareness campaign on UK
university campuses to reach out to a wider and more diverse audience. Our objective was to improve brand penetration and change the perception among graduates that EY, as a career choice, is only suitable for students with an accounting or business-related degree. EY aims to attract the brightest and the best with
diverse perspectives and a range of skills and talents. A lot of talented graduates don’t consider EY because they don’t think their degree is relevant to professional services — in fact, 40% of our hires have ‘non-relevant’ degrees. We created a prize-tagging challenge Facebook page
which was at the heart of our campaign, supported by on-campus activity. Promotional activity on campus drove traffic to an interactive Facebook page where visitors could tag (and win) prizes. Students explored the objects in the prize-tagging room. Objects in the room were accompanied by cryptic clues and each object represented a prize. After solving the clues, students tagged the images, naming prizes they wanted to win. The first prize-tagging challenge ran in October/
November 2011. The following February we linked up with student unions and launched a new prize-tagging challenge with an even bigger incentive – the university with the most competition entries would win £10,000 for their student union and advice from Ernst & Young on how to invest it. Facebook enabled us to share updates throughout the
Ernst & Young UK Careers – over 21,900 likes
campaign, and students could post their questions about the competition or our programs. We were also able to host a live leaderboard, which allowed students to see which institutions had the most entries. Warwick University won with the largest number of
@EY_StudentsUK – over 1,900 followers
‘likes’. As part of the prize, members of our UK Advisory team visited the winning institution to meet with the union and help them create a plan that would put the money to good use. The union has now invested in a social enterprise business which was launched in October 2012. The results speak for themselves. It was a hugely
EYUKCareers – over 2,340 views
successful campaign as we won a number of awards including the AGR award for best employer brand and we had impressive engagement with our audience on Facebook.
What they learnt… Even if you don’t have the same social media resources as Ernst & Young, there are a number of lessons to be learned from this campaign:
1. Scheduling is essential Don’t approach your campaign in an ad hoc way. EY’s two-stage competition campaign was carefully planned from the beginning of the scheme in September, right through to the end of February, taking into account each and every on-campus event they attended. A communications schedule will help you manage and maintain your campaign.
2. Graduates like prizes! You don’t need £10,000 to provide an enticing prize for students and graduates using your social media channels. Draw upon your team’s expertise and offer knowledge- based rewards, such as a day work-shadowing, or a thorough CV check. This knowledge will be of real value to prospective applicants, and best of all, will cost you nothing.
3. Respect your online community Once you’ve built an online community through incentives such as giveaways, you then owe it to them to deliver a regularly updated campaign. EY managed to maintain engagement on Facebook by simply updating their page regularly with campaign updates, images from campus events, and by responding to queries posted by students.
4. Use your imagination Think about what students actually like, and tailor your campaign accordingly. EY managed to identify and tap into a spirit of friendly competition between institutions, which allowed the campaign to take off on a national level. This kind of ingenuity might be rare, but ideas cost nothing.
GRADUATE RECRUITER 19
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