The Task
HarperCollins wanted to attract a new breed of candidate. They were making great strides in utilising digital capabilities to develop and market books, and they needed digitally minded people to inspire a new generation of ideas. Rather than attracting their usual bumper crop of English Literature students, they wanted the new Summer Placement and Graduate Schemes to entice creative, entrepreneurial, ambitious, technologically literate students to the company.

Our principal challenge was to overcome the target audience’s misconceptions about HarperCollins and the publishing industry, excite them about the possibilities, and achieve all this inside very tight timescales.

Action
The Avatar campaign represented a dramatic change in style and message for HarperCollins, but one which was necessary to achieve cut-through in the target market. We focused on digital channels with minimal use of traditional media to drive traffic. Students were encouraged to interact with the brand via a dedicated microsite and a Facebook page updated by current HarperCollins interns. This two-way communication inspired a great deal of close brand interaction and established HarperCollins as a genuine digital leader.

The theme of digital communication was taken to its logical conclusion by encouraging applicants to apply creatively – via videos, podcasts, websites, or any other medium that best showed their talents.

Results
The campaign generated a huge response with 4,000 unique visitors in the first four weeks. Both schemes were tremendously over-subscribed, and crucially, with their desired digital breed of student. The quality of candidate surpassed our best expectations, as did the creativity of many of the applications which included videos and bespoke websites. Best of all, the seeds of changing perceptions were sewn, allowing HarperCollins to build their reputation as a digital leader.