WINNER
CLIENT: AXA
AGENCY: in-house
CREATIVE TEAM: James Woods, Helen Bradshaw, Paul Tiley and Becki Robertson
The recruitment experiences of three fictional characters formed a key element of AXA's awareness-raising diversity strategy, aimed at more than 12,000 employees. They were able to view online blogs and diaries, participate in discussions and vote on which candidates they preferred. Dianah Worman, CIPD diversity adviser and a member of the judging panel, said that the campaign was a great example of engaging people in the diversity debate.
"The work began with a teaser campaign to get people thinking about diversity, leading up to computer-based training. Once employees had completed this training they were incentivised with an online competition where they had to answer questions about what they had learned.
"The key to the success of the campaign was the creative approach. Three fictitious characters (George, Jake and Aimee) were created to apply for an imaginary role within AXA. Each of these characters had diary entries or blogs on the intranet and employees could follow the candidates as they went through the recruitment process. At various stages employees could vote to say which candidate they thought was the most appropriate for the role and discuss the merits of who should be employed. The candidates all portrayed different diversity issues and made employees challenge their perceptions about people’s differences. This campaign was all about bringing diversity to life and making it real and accessible to all.
"The campaign was also quite controversial, instigating significant debate among employees as to who would actually get the job, and many people did not agree with the winning candidate.
"This work was all developed internally without the use of an external agency and was a joint effort between the learning solutions, diversity and internal communications teams."